One Park, Two Perpetrators

To anybody besides scary men,

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you lay in a park all night, alone? What the probability of getting killed or snatched is? Here’s a convoluted thought process: you’re the main character, and often main characters like to look out of windows melodramatically at the rain while a Billie Eilish song plays. They also like to go on walks at night. It gives you that solace of quietude and self. But funnily, you’ve never done that. Why? Because you’d likely get kidnapped or assaulted. So, the solution pondered hypothetically upon is this: what if you were the murderer, peeker, kidnapper? If you act the craziest, does that make you untouchable? And more interestingly: what happens when one perpetrator comes across another - if that ever does happen? Do they team up? Kill each other? Battle to see who encompasses more lunacy? Or tragically, but audience-vouched for, discuss what it was that’d brought them to this bare-of-beloved brink?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Carny Park was the local for South Londoners. Centred between streets. In the daylight it was a mute greyness, the grass a pale green. At dusk dawning, people crossed it to get to the train station on the other side for work and school. It had a meagre playground which mums and toddlers played on in the mid-morning. Afternoon usage was strictly for school teens to hang out at, and sunset was when those would go home for dinner. When first nyx fell, some of those teens would come back to smoke dope at the benches – or sell it. By perhaps ten o’clock, it became barren of its voluptuous visitors and was left awake with no entertainment, until the comfort of morning soothed again.

A crunch of sticks was heard at three AM in Carny Park, a trainerd foot lifting from them. The smell was that of a misty bonfire, and the air, bitter freeze. The swing made its little cry as it got pushed by either the physical or supernatural, and the benches sat thickly as wooden fat in the shadows. The foot had its twin, which made them feet, and they presently stood grounded within a bush, waiting. Some waited for brave girls who’d walk home, or youthful, naive boys. Some waited for both. Viper waited for something, without any terror or emotion at all. A rustle corresponded, their corpse sunken eyes darted to the sound, round and un-soul having. They wore a hooded black coat to widen their width, and out-of-style skinny jeans. Viper had no fashion sense at all, and they did not give a fuck.

Who’s there?

Me.

Who’s where?

Oh, there? I don’t know. But I’m ready.

Viper clutched the hammer they had with them, not too hard, but coldly. They crept backward out the bush in odd steps. They looked over to their right, where the sound had come from. Eye contact ignited. But not from the expected, rather from another who was watching, waiting, in the same bush. Not the victim, but the perpetrator.

Now what?

-

‘One more push!’

And she was out, after what seemed like days of heathenish labour. June sixth, nineteen-ninety-seven, six-thirteen PM, in a London hospital.

‘It’s a girl!’

Stacey’s first reaction was bored.

‘Oh.’ She said through red-faced puffs. Silence filled where it wasn’t supposed to.

‘Why isn’t she crying… is something wrong?’

The nurse frowned at first as she held the baby, then put on a smile of fake excitement again.

‘No, nothing wrong… she’s fine.’

‘Okay.’ Stacey mumbled unsurely.

‘Here you go, mummy… here’s your daughter.’ The nurse said, her expression a little more genuine now. Stacey took her baby into steady arms. When she looked down at her, a drop to the stomach announced itself. The baby’s eyes were far too big for its head, black and unblinking; its face, sallow and emotionless. Did it make her a horrible person to regard her own spawn as blatantly ugly? It did. She tried on a smile instead.

‘Hey, baby!’ She spoke animatedly. Its face remained the same, disinterested. At this point, the damn thing could be dead.

‘Got a name for her, love?’ The nurse asked. Stacey traced her mind for the small list of names she’d come up with. There was no external input because there was no other person who cared for this new life.

‘Uh… Viper.’ She replied. But then she reconsidered. The baby was already cold, it didn’t need a name that made it colder.

‘Actually… Viper-Love.’ She spoke in-between decisions.

‘Yeah, that makes it more feminine, d’un’t it?’ The nurse bantered back agreeably. Stacey nodded dismissively and gawked back down to Viper-Love. Her eyes still hadn’t blinked, didn’t even have a tear welling. I don’t really like her, Stacey thought.

-

At the exact same time, on the same day, at the same hospital, in a room across the hall, a couple awaited their newborn baby.

‘One more push!’ And it came with hardly a struggle. He cried healthily, wet in bloody vitality.

‘How much does he weigh, then?’ The father, Richard, asked eagerly.

‘Seven point two!’ The nurse answered back over the screams. Richard broke his usually tidy character to round his hand into a fist and said:

‘Yes!’

‘Oh, don’t be so competitive!’ Angela, the mother, snapped back.

‘You see, my husband and I play this gam-.’

‘Here’s your boy!’ The nurse interrupted, placing the now wrapped baby into its mother’s arms. Angela smirked hungrily. His eyes were blue and friendly, his skin plump. A wonderful baby boy, another addition to the Sheridan household.

‘Have a name?’ The nurse asked politely.

‘Of course! It’s Ruben.’ Angela replied with slight condescend.

‘Bring Charlotte in, darling, would you?’ Angela asked her prim husband. He nodded sternly and saw to it.

‘Now, what’re you going to be? Hey? Prime minister, rugby player, Judge – like your daddy!’

Ruben smiled. But not the way a baby should. Angela swallowed hard. She had an instant premonition that accompanied the nerves. He wasn’t going to be any of those things, was he? And now, she didn’t really like him.

-

Viper and Ruben exchanged only plaguing reticence. Both the appearance of men and hardly noticeable if not.

-

Viper had decided at a young age that if they wanted to be taken seriously as a psychotic sadist, they’d have to appear masculine. Unfortunately, the world didn’t fear women and girls as much as they should. But Viper knew the truth. A woman’s mind was far more calculative than a man’s, yet underestimated. And a man’s exterior was seemingly scarier than a woman’s. She wanted to be both. But then decided they each had weaknesses she didn’t want to behold. Therefore, she merely became Viper, not Love, for she did not possess any, and not she or he, just they.

Age ten was when the incident happened, their mother had unalived herself by needle in pronounced vein. Viper – being the only other household member in their council estate flat – had walked in on it unknowingly. The sad thing was that this was the norm. There had never not been a time when Stacey had been sober, and that day, Viper had just thought it was simply another one of those, except this time, it’d gone further.

Don’t help.

Really? Okay.

And so, they didn’t. Viper settled down her school bag, used their two pale hands to brush back their brittle, boyish, blonde hair, and travelled further into the living room. They muted life out with the iPod from the coffee table. Their stomach rumbled and the fridge was standing near in the conjoining kitchen; they guessed it was time to eat. There was nothing in there when they opened it besides tomato ketchup and deli polony. They did a little dance when they squirted the red slop onto the cold, processed deceased, and almost smiled when they ate and let it resolve them. They took their time, flicking through playful songs, chewing for taste, and when they were finished, they took out one headphone, turned, and saw that their mother still hadn’t moved. Her high didn’t usually take her out for this long. Viper went over to her. Stacey looked almost more peaceful than ever before. They shook her, once, then twice, and then took her pulse. There was no thump. And when a cry was supposed to correspond, Viper merely discerned dispassionately. They knew they ought to call someone about it, but couldn’t help but fulfill their desires first by watching some afternoon TV. They flicked on Tracey Beaker, and took mental notes as one of the characters cried about how their parent had failed them, yet again. Viper mimicked the cry, scrunching up their face and speaking in intervals of breath. Their eyes lazily took to the phone after, and they stood up to walk toward it. Viper cleared their throat, readying the right response.

‘Nine-nine-nine, what’s your emergency?’

‘M-my mummy’s dead… please h-help.’ Viper cried; their face yet to be anything but placid. The woman on the other side of the phone’s tone leapt, and progressed in comforting Viper whilst getting an ambulance sent out to the scene.

-

Ruben was busy maiming insects, when the scout leader called the scouts out of their tents for dinner. He pocketed one in his shorts and unzipped the material door. The ten-year-old had grown black hair and deepened the blue of his eyes. He had a vampiric look about him, and that contributed to him being labelled as the weirdo at almost every child-infested place he went. A serving of bangers and mash were dolloped onto his paper plate, and he went to sit on a log alone. He pulled the now three-legged spider from his pocket and placed it at the top of the mountain of potato. He took the plastic fork and fed himself the spider-mash. There was a little crunch, but nothing extraordinary. He longed for the day where he’d actually feel something different, wanted his mouth to gnaw upon something a smidge more satisfying. He’d practically been at this camp all summer, and term was spent in the boarding house at school. Sometimes he’d forget his mother’s face, and other times he’d know it all too well. She didn’t like him, that’s what she’d reminded him time and time again. So, he didn’t like her.

‘You don’t like the other’s either?’ Another outcast asked, his teeth braced and badges sedentary.

‘Why would I? They bore me.’

‘Me too.’

Ruben had a moment of wondering. This was the first kid his age who related to him. Now a decision imbued; did he befriend the wimp or use him to help quell other cravings?

‘Come to my tent, tonight, after the others have fallen asleep. Maybe we can actually do something fun.’ The boy invited. Ruben nodded in acceptance.

Use him as a pawn.

Indeed.

The night bullied the light away, and the awaited time struck. Ruben travelled out of his tent quietly. He could always put on a kind façade when in master manipulation mode. He trudged through the campsite, the low fizzling fire keeping an eye on him. He made a shadow of his gaunt fingers against the tent’s outer to let the boy know he’d arrived. He keenly unzipped it as soon as he’d spotted the sign.

‘Shhhh… come in.’ The boy tried calmly, although the undertones of his voice shed rebeldom excitement.

‘Here, I’ve got marshmallows, chocolate-.

‘Let’s pull a prank.’ Ruben interrupted. The boy’s brows frowned.

‘We’ll run out of camp, then scream.’

‘Uhhh…?’

‘They’ll think somethings wrong and when they come to find us, we’ll tell them the boogie man kidnapped us and we fought him off.’

‘Ok-.’

‘C’mon, it’ll be fun!’ Ruben pushed.

‘Don’t be a woose.’ He finished with a deadpanned glare.

The way in which Ruben persuaded was that of one with a phd in fictitiousism, the other boy too innocent to see through the veneer of paltry friendship.

‘Okay…’ The boy replied unsurely. Ruben smirked a hollow twist, and they got straight to it. They snuck through the wicked woods, the boy – like a normal child – fearful of what hid beyond the puniness of his shaking torchlight, and Ruben, ambling forth, feeling nothing, not even adrenaline. One could always establish that something was wrong with a child when they didn’t fear the dark and its folk-told monsters. Just how when Ruben got into his bed every night, he switched off without so much as a peek to the wardrobe or under the bed. Not even one eye open to see if the coat hanging on the back of his door hadn’t metamorphosized into a figure of fiend. A child who didn’t shake at the mere wind knocking on the window in the dead of the night, was a child conceived divergently and not by human. Is it nature or nurture that made them this way? Or is neither even close to the gravity of their reality?

One camp leader woke after another, like the quick topple of dominos. Two screams had broken out from nearby, but not within the vicinity they’d hoped. The first scream sounded hardly scared, but the second, that was a plead of desperation. They all came out of their tents and made a portal of light with their torches. They scowered the trees high and low, only catching disturbed owls and other nocturnal creatures. The wind had taken them in the right direction; their safe-light finally landing on a small figure standing rigor-mortis like in its stillness.

‘Ruben? What’s happened? Did you scream?’

Ruben made his bottom lip quiver a little and said:

‘Yes, Sully and I sillily came out here for an adventure… a-and now he’s gone!’

The leaders looked to one another, each mouth dry of response.

‘Gone where?’

Ruben shrugged his shoulders, his hands neatly behind his back.

‘Okay, well I’ll take you back to camp and the others will start searching for Sully.’

‘O-okay.’ He muttered back brilliantly. The Leader escorted Ruben paternally, whilst Ruben kept those hands firmly behind his back. When he’d been put back into his tent safely, he finally looked to his thin-skinned hands. They were as clean as could be, no dirt, no nothing. He squinted his eyes and inspected further, just for complete insurance. An ounce of almost-dry, red liquid sat comfortably within his index finger’s nail. He smiled a little and removed it. Now all evidence had been eliminated.

-

Ruben and Viper were still yet to say a word, stunned by each other’s presence and calculating their own sinister comprehensions.

‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ Ruben broke.

‘None of your business.’ Viper piped back, her voice deepened and her stare, unbudging. Ruben quickly took to view Viper’s weapon, whilst he kept his own - heavy-duty kitchen knife - behind his back.

‘What… you gonna hammer me to death?’ He chuffed.

‘Yes, but first, I’ll take one of your balls and play throw and catch with it.’ Viper rebutted calmly. Ruben’s cockiness quaked a little inside. He didn’t let it show, however. Suddenly, a noise came from beyond them. They gawked at each other, then to the sound. They both peeked through the bushes, catching a skinny girl on the swing, illuminated by the paltry moonlight to reveal long, blonde hair and wind-kissed, rosy cheeks. She had earphones in and looked to the sky contently.

The perfect victim.

The question was, who was to get her first? Viper and Ruben exchanged eyes again, the largeness of Viper's somewhat creeping Ruben out, and Ruben’s slender man silhouette provoking some discomfort in Viper. They both hadn’t feared much in life. But perhaps this was it. The undeniable terror of someone being more perverted, soulless, and narcissistic than themselves. In an instant, they ran to the girl, both at close speed. The bush birthed two emotionless gallopers, starving and ready. The girl caught sight of this and screamed a soundless howl. She froze when they reached her. And crimson blood splattered onto her wide-eyed face. Her skin became as pale as a ghost, she dropped from the swing onto her knees, and her earphones fell out of her squealing ears.

Then, she grinned.

Two bodies lay on the ground; a wounded hole vomiting blood from each of their stomachs. She stood up, dropped her two knives, and looked to the sky again, more contently than last.

What happens when one perpetrator comes across another, or more importantly, when there is a third? For on June sixth, nineteen-ninety-seven, at six-thirteen PM, in a hospital in London, another baby was born. And she was more sardonic than both Ruben and Viper.