Ally Black

A Story by RoxyMonoxide

A small boy dies only to find himself transformed, in a strange and uninviting landscape, for once able to look after himself.

Ally black was ten years old when he stepped on a needle, contracted HIV and slowly died.

He'd been playing football in the street, a run-down but lively place framed with rock solid tenements.

A park had appeared in the centre of the scheme after one of these tenements had been demolished. It had taken three years to put up, had housed thousands of people and was reduced to rubble in a day.

The park had no definite start date being merely an abandoned piece of land and not an official council park, with gates and swings. Instead the odd mound of debris, the litter of ages, a smattering of used methadone capsules and spent needles captured children imaginations

Ally's mum couldn't afford new shoes for him once the old ones had run their course, so she's bound his feet in thick rags. It seemed sensible at the time but in retrospect they were no match for the syringe.

The coroner’s report stated the course of death as Acquired Imuno Deficiency Syndrome coupled with underlying health issues. His small body simply couldn't stand another blow. Bad diet, pollution from the neighboring factories, teachers with canes. His mother had just not been able to protect him from these things.

AIDS might have killed him, but the cause of death was poverty.

Where was he?

Eyes widened, all the better to take in the dank surroundings, what dreary light there was.

He was lying in the foetal position beside train tracks. It was overcast and an infinitely long freight train rolled continually by.

He unfurled, shook some of the soot off himself, and began walking towards the haze of some city in the far distance.

He might have walked for days. Traveling in the opposite direction of the freight train gave the impression of moving incredibly fast whilst the monotony of the scene suggested stasis.

The sun neither rose nor set, or if it did the difference was negligible. At any rate there were no birds to welcome the new day and no crops to measure the passing of seasons.

Halfway through his journey Ally wondering where his conception of the sun had even come from, and then instantly started to forget it.

It just wasn't relevant.

Entering the city was a gradual process but he soon found himself penned in by high buildings. The feeling was that there were people everywhere but just out of sight, perhaps peering from a tenth floor window or lying in wait around the next corner.

Then he caught someone’s eye.

A man standing behind a pane of free standing glass, slightly obscured by the reflection of brick-work.

The man winked.

'What's wrong with your head?' ask Ally, and received a smack for his trouble. As he went to rub his wounded ear his hand missed its mark entirely. Utterly disorientated now, Ally reached towards his head again and this time found it, but found it a lot smaller than he had expected.

'Are all heads like this here?'

The man hissed and slithered off.

Ally searched for a found an angle from which the pane of glass would reflect his image. He was mildly surprised to find himself an old man with an extremely miniature head, like the distortion in a circus mirror.

Trying to blink the image away brought another disturbing discovery; his eyes blinked vertically instead of horizontally.

In this place he was thoroughly reptilian.

Having accepted this he stalked off to satisfy his hunger, which was ravenous.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Gillian had worked out that the price of a new pair of shoes was equivalent to four pints of heavy. Alternatively, she could have given up her packed lunches for a week. Piece-work, however, requires more energy than you'd think, so on balance this option would have been a false economy anyway.

He staggered in having drunken, to Gillian’s estimation, at least eight size fours. It had been two months since the burial and neither had managed to visit the grave yet. He wept silently sitting opposite her and looked out of the gleaming windows.

'So?'

'Sarason's Arms.'

She lifted herself with an effort disproportionate to her thin frame. She was not wearing her thirty years well. Every callous, burst blood vessel and entrenched wrinkle spoke to this.

He had his own calluses’ and scars, but unlike her boasted an impressive gut.

'Got the sack today' he called through to the kitchen.

Gillian stopped chopping the carrots.

'You what?'

'Got the sack, foreman says my mind's not on the job.'

She moves through to the living room door.

'He was right, I kept making mistakes. Today I got sand in the mix.’

She couldn't believe what she was hearing and was speechless because of it.

'Instant dismissal. No redundancy'

It was then she made her move and slid the kitchen knife in-between two of his ribs.

She then pulled it out in the opposite direction to which she had inserted it and watched him bleed to death on the floor.

After soaking up as much blood as possible and cleaning the carrots away, Gillian Black left the house and went to sit beside her son's grave for a while.

Ally was neither here nor there, had hatched fully grown from a leathery egg beside train tracks. He'd walked these tracks and found an image of himself. Now he was working out the method of feeding yourself here.

Hunting.

He watched a man stalking between concrete structures with purposeful movements. His head swivelled mechanically and his tongue tasted the air. Changing tact he reversed his direction and ran full pelt towards Ally who only narrowly avoided a savaging.

He was learning how to hunt be being actively hunted.

Something clicked. There were no children here.

'Where are the children'

You know the answer. They've all been killed.

'No women'

They are obsolete, persons hatch with all the skills they need to survive.

'Who laid the eggs'

Your mother, obviously.

'Who is she'

It doesn't matter. Go and hunt.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

'It a nice day for putting out a washin’. That's lovely washin’ you've got'

'So it is. Go away you intereferin’ auld so and so' was all she could think to say. But it worked, and Nora took herself away.

Many years has elapsed since her sons passing, and today finds Gillian washing his sock, the socks she still wore, for she had always made sure the boy had good quality socks. With his name sowed in them. On her feet.

Having hung the washing, she slowly wondered back indoors, into the same flat she's shared with him. Ground floor, two rooms, comfy chair, telly in the corner. She'd watch the midday news, which she did with as little interest as you can possible imagine, going through the motions. Lifted herself and went

for the walk she walked every Wednesday. Past the new builds, under the bridge, through the big park and into the cemetery.

And after that slog she sat herself down on the blanket she's brought for the grave side, and pulled out from her trolley that old blanket she'd once carried Ally home in and said a prayer in ill faith.

'as I walk though the shadow...'

So, the final smoke was in order, which she had. The final look about, eyes lingering on the far-too-old headstone and she swallowed seven capsules of heroine-substitute, stolen from a friend, lay back, and with one hand on her heart feeling it slow, blindness sweeping over her, and one heart on her sons

grave, and a strange little smile on her face, died.

Here's lies I, crushed, Gillian Black,

Sir or Lady

A woman killed by heart attack,

Once I worked my hands to the bone

Up in the world, and now I lay

Uninterested on my son's grave

All day, without measure

All night, without pleasure.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ally sliced and slithered his way across the queerest of landscapes. Out of the city now, and meandering though the wilderness of the rural, he was out of his element. Trees grew in spirals overhead, great grasses crisscrossed the sky, strange natural phenomenon shot perfectly circular methane balls of bright whiteness into the smog, and soon enough Ally knows it all like the back of his aged hand. He leaps from the corkscrew tree to land with perfect balance on the outstretched limb of another, moves his head quickly to one side, and back again, sniffing.

He is not hungry now, he has had his feed before he left his city home, and now travels for fun. He has a quarry you see, and will stop at nothing.

A hint! A whisper of scene upon the air. AHHH, what delicious temptation.

He flips his body to one side, his brain working a furious pace to locate the enemy. And he's off through the undergrowth, half gliding, half scurrying, all predator. Ducking a low hanging branch, he dives full bodied into a swamp and finds himself for the first time amphibious, gills he never knew he had breath

into him murky, algae-rich waters, and webbed feet push him onwards.

A glimpse of tail confronts him as he raises his strange heterochromic eyes above the water. His quarry is myopic, and has not seen his pursuer yet, but the swish of water alerts him, and with a flick of his forked tail he shoots of through the vegetation on the far shore. But not before Ally has drawn blood.

He has sunk a tooth into target’s flank, and although he has escaped and runs, the game is over. Ally has tasted blood.

The creature, we cannot call him a man, fails to even nearly escape, and is dashed to into a sand-back only having achieved some twenty paces.

A flash of recognition passes between the two before Ally strike the last, and merciless, thunder-blow to the skull, crushing it, splintering it and sending

blood shooting through the eyes and out of the slitted nostrils.

'Ally' was the things last words.

But here, here especially, family ties have no sentimental bearing.

Ally devourers the old man’s body, despite his lack of hunger he does not know when he'll be able to eat again.