Drama Under The Mask

In his arms she lay. Her short brown hair flat against a bulging, alien skull. Her once bright eyes, that had earlier laughed with mirth, dulled as they met his. Not seeing, just looking.

They'd met for the first time behind the girls bathroom, something Andy liked to joke about afterwards. Something that would often leave him with sore eyes and a bad night's sleep.

It had, at first, planned out to be just another summer for Andy. he and his friends, “the gang of goons” as his ma liked to call them, would be found smoking behind the outside beach house. Propped up against a grainy wall, bottle of coke in one hand and a cig stuck between stained teeth, they’d squat in the shadows like bogeymen, commenting on the passersby with snide remarks and sometimes just yelling at them. To the far side of the beach an old pier could be made out, standing gloriously over the shallows and one of Weston's main summer attractions for all the out of town tourists.

‘Oi, oi, we goin out tonight?’ Asked Biter. He was crouched by the far wall, a spliff rolled in one hand and the ever present dopey smirk on his face. A grade C- student in all academics except computer programming, Percy, more commonly known as Biter, was a weaselly boy. Too skinny and too tall all of a sudden, he'd often walk with a hung head and bent figure.

‘Club Loco got an event,’ said B-boy, slouched lazily against his girl, Cara, a cig passing back and forth between them.

‘Le’s just go to that.’ Andy belched loudly over the tall bottle of coke they’d nicked from the old lady’s store down the road.

‘Where’s Monty at?’ Andy asked, setting the bottle aside to reach for the lit spliff Biter was offering. ‘Taking a piss.’ Answers Cara, between snogging B-boy and taking drags of the cig stuck between her chubby fingers. Polished baby blue nails pressing indents into the joint. Andy rolled with a groan, lying down on the muddy ground tourists liked to believe was sand.

Taking a deep draw on the stick of weed, his eyes fixated on the cascading, endless, blue above him, a type of freedom he could only see and never touch. An escape, that’s what that sky offered, he thought. His da couldn't reach it, his ma would cry, he knew that, but then he’d be gone. Free.

‘Hey,’ Monty’s voice was a background buzz to Andy’s mind, a distant presence.

‘He off?’

‘Ay, Mr A-man…’ B-boy called. A shadow moved to hover over Andy, blocking his perceptive view of the sky. ‘Guy’s, this is Ella’ Said Monty, his arm wrapped around the girl’s shoulder ‘Ella, this is B-boy, Cara, Biter and over here’s Andy, our A-man to getting the good.' The girl who had been peering down at Andy’s dazed state, looked up with a wide smile that showed a small mole protruding under her lower lip, her top right fang jaunting out a little to long. Maybe it was the haze talking, but Andy couldn't help but see her as strangely pretty.

‘Hi’ cheered Ella, waving at the startled, hostile group of friends, ‘I’m Ella’.

‘She y’know...mental?’ Stage whispered Biter, gesturing to his head. They glared at him, Cara throwing a handful of sand at his chest. ‘Shut it. Sorry bout him, Ella, where you from?’ Cara asks. Ella’s smile faltered, but quickly picked up again and both she and Monty took a seat on the dirty beach floor. The light blue jeans she wore, already stained in mud.

‘Cardiff, but we don’t stick around much. Not for long anyways.’ Said Ella.

‘Cardiff...You mean your from Wales?’ B-boy snickered, getting a light elbow in the side from Cara. ‘Yes,’ said Ella, feeling uncertain now as everyone appeared to be quietly laughing or hiding a leer in her direction.

‘You a sheep lover, Ella?’ Said Biter, confusing Ella profoundly. But as soon as Biter had spoken those words everyone was laughing apart from Ella, and Andy.

‘You bunch of pansy tit’s, shut it.’ Growled Andy, from where he was now sitting up. This just raised more laughter from everyone, including Ella.

‘Yeah, laugh it up all you lot, see if I care later when you come begging me for the gold,’ Said Andy, grumpily getting up to head for the men’s. The door slammed shut on Monty’s piercing laughter, cutting it midway through into a light braying.

The men’s bathroom was a mixture of shameful disgust and putrid hell. Andy’s nose burned from the strong smells of urine, faeces and a good night outs vomit, to the point his eyes were watering. The place didn't look any better than it smelt, the wet floor being questionable alone as to whether it was in fact water or urine. Tracks of mud and shit marred the walls in front of the sinks and one out of three of the public toilets weren't clogged up.

Used to the hell hole, Andy made his way to the usually clean stall, steering clear of the deeper puddles that’d leak through his pumps and newly darned socks.

Later he’d thank his ma for the proper job she’d done darning those socks, even as his shoes hung up on the line, wet. Maybe if he hadn't opened that door, if he'd followed that gut feeling telling him not to open that bleedin door. Maybe if he'd just excepted that someone might be in that stall and not bothered to lock it, maybe then he could of walked out of there and back into boring normality.

The buzz of flies haunted Andy after that day, after having watched them take perch on the man’s open lidded eye, flying out from a slack jaw.

The bathroom door slamming open disturbed the flies, who’d settled to laying eggs in the man’s pale, dead flesh. Andy stumbled back with a cry, covering his own mouth against the horde of flies, and promptly stepping into a large puddle of -what he only hoped, but very much doubted- to be water.

Behind him the door opened, but all he could hear and see were the thousand buzzing flies that swarmed like an angry gathering of bees (or wasps) swirling around the bathroom. Coming for him. ‘Andy?’ Biter called with mirth in his voice, mirth that quickly changed to alarm as he saw the swarming flies and Andy.

‘Jeesus. Andy, c’mon mate - Oh shit. Is-is that? Let’s get outta here,’ said Biter, his usual relaxed without a care attitude gone. Yanking Andy’s arm, Biter dragged the guy out of there, not slowing in his clumsy, head first run, until they were out under the hot summer sun. Both boys fell on their backsides, retching up what was left of an earlier lunch.

‘What’s up with you?’ Asked Monty, casually walking over with everyone in tow.

‘That - There, in there. Don’t go in there,’ Andy gasped through a hacking cough, he was leaning on hands and knees with eyes squeezed shut. All he could see was the big fat mountain of muscle that was Mr. Stein, their obese maths teacher, his throat slit open and dried blood pooled down his white tank and onto the floor and trousers between his open legs.

‘What’s wrong?’ Asks Ella, coming up behind Monty.

'Something. Maybe someone getting it on,’ laughed B-boy, pulling Cara from behind to kiss at her neck. ‘Mr. Stein was in there, guys,’ said Biter, white faced and shaking where he sat. ‘Uh, I'm not listening to one of our teacher’s having sex with someone. Gross,’ Said Cara. ‘Mr. Stein? We have to see this, Car,’ Said B-boy with childish enthusiasm, heading toward the bathrooms.

‘Don’t. It’s not…’

B-boy hesitates, all of them turning to Andy, who looked as pale as a ghost just then. ‘He’s- He’s dead,’ Said Andy. ‘What? What you on about?’ B-boy asks uncertainty. Monty doesn't say a word but goes to sit down by Andy, careful not to sit in the mess both his friends had thrown up, Ella following suit to sit on Andy’s other side.

‘What happened?’ Monty asks.