Thicker Than Water

The decapitation technique is meant to work well in a dictatorship, where a lack of orders from the top can paralyse a political or military organisation not used to acting on its own initiative. But the rules for a rumble are simple, and these boys had clearly been in a few. They were on me in a second, the lad on my left grabbing me around the throat and the one on my right landing a hard punch on my chin before Johnno had even finished falling to the ground. I got in a couple more punches myself, but it was anybody’s guess where they landed.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Johnno climb to his feet, the lower half of his face masked in blood, like a red bandanna. He stared at me with impossibly wide eyes. At the same time, not breaking that gaze for a moment, he held out his hands, palms up.

But as he stepped in towards me the eager crowd moved, reluctantly, to let someone else squirm through. It was the kid, Bic. He stepped hastily in front of me, blocking his brother’s path.

‘I’ll tell Mum,’ he said.

‘Fuck off, Bic,’ Johnno yelled, brandishing the two knives over his head like a picador.

‘I’ll tell Mum,’ Bic repeated, and collapsed at my feet.

8

As though a voice had yelled ‘Cut!’ from the darkness beyond the street light, everyone instantly lost volition and direction. The hands holding me fell away. Johnno blinked three times, each slower than the last, as he stared down at his brother’s sprawled body. His bloodthirsty cohorts looked at a loss, almost embarrassed, unable even to hold each other’s gaze. I knew how they felt: some tremor had passed over and through us, and this was the pained lull between the quake an Ver’d the aftershock.

I knelt down and lifted Bic up, gently, in my arms.

‘Open the door,’ I said to the nearest bravo, hooking my head to point. He moved to obey, and as I stepped forward the ranks of Johnno’s gang parted. One burly acned teen put his knife-hand behind his back with incongruous shyness, as though he’d been caught flicking ink pellets at school.