Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Alice Jenkins

It was erroneous belief that the Supplier was within her reach that powered Alice to dart out of the chapel hall alone as the others stayed behind and comforted a quaking Gemma. An erroneous belief that had probably came from the line of cocaine she had taken, before the event had began, in the chapel toilets. Powder lined up on the windowsill, under a crucifixion figurine, she rolled her eyes before snorting it up with a smile of relief. She couldn't believe she hadn't realised how great it was before; despite her own perennial and much more serious drug use, she used to look down on every sporadic line of coke Cleo took. Yes, she now found herself incapable of preventing her mind from straying back to it every time she came down and yes, she was also spending such a preposterous amount of money on it that she could barely afford to eat, but with it, she was so much better at being herself. With it, she pursued every bit of information about Cleo's death or the Supplier, every paper screenshot of Sasha Evans' hate blog, with the conviction that each morsel of it she found would lead to something else (despite the fact that she had reached dead end after dead end). On top of that, the physical withdrawal symptoms were nothing like those of the amphetamines she took, nor any of the benzos. On the contrary, they were a lot more tractable. Of course, she'd had to send a few texts around, find a new dealer that didn't attend St. Edmunds, one that didn't source their stock from the Supplier; to buy off Luca Stone on such a regular basis would be inadvertently funding them. But it had very much become her new drug of choice. And it fuelled her, step after resolute step, as she made her way out of the chapel and round the side of the building, shoes crunching down on the snow, to where the Supplier stood with Luca.

"Stop them!" She yelled at him, but with her command, the Supplier grabbed onto Luca's shoulder, swung their gloved fist back and ploughed it into his face. His nose promptly squashed like a melon underneath it, blood dripping out like water from a tap onto the snow at his feet.

"Ah, shit!" He bellowed, a hand flying to his nose as the Supplier went bounding off into the forest behind them, Alice deciding against checking on Luca to follow them into the labyrinth of trees. Her heart beating hysterically, seemingly about to erupt from her chest, she felt a deep unease lining her stomach like the snow falling from the tree tops onto the forest floor beneath her. She persisted, nevertheless, stumbling through the overgrowth, the black cape flitting through the trees ahead of her like some kind of rare, overgrown butterfly. The forest was silent, too, apart from the pattering of the 2 pairs of feet, which hit the ground one after another, the whispering of the barren tree branches in the breeze, and the occasional puff from Alice as her breath billowed out into the frosty air, looking like nitrogen gas against the blackness surrounding her. Then, there was a crunch, a crackle of branches, louder than normal. Squinting ahead into the darkness, Alice saw them, The Supplier, sprawled across the floor. They had tripped and fallen, it appeared, much to her petrified delight. It was as if her heart had swelled at the sight of them lying there, vulnerable, but was being reigned back in by the fear of the approach, the two fighting against one another responsible for its heavy beating. Sprinting towards where they still lay, a childish, maniacal kind of excitement swept over her, and she launched her foot into their side, slamming it into their rib cage, once, twice, three times, as they hunched over in a ball, trying to avoid her kicks.

"You...piece...of...absolute...shit!" She shrieked as she went, in between jagged breaths, whole body electrified by fear, and disbelief that they were actually there in front of her. So much so, it took her a while to register their cries.

"Stop! Stop! Alice, stop it! It's just me!"

Exhaling heavily, hand trembling, Alice bent down and pulled the mask off, only to find the white, frantic face of Rudy Williams staring back at her.

No. It couldn't be him, she thought to herself.

Rudy Williams?

It just fucking couldn't be. Him being the Supplier was an answer she couldn't accept, like getting to the end of the puzzle and finding that although the final piece just about fits in to the space left over, it doesn't slot in like it should, leaving that feeling of frustrated dissatisfaction. That knowing you've gone wrong but having no idea where, and lacking the energy to attempt to work it out.

"I'm not who you're looking for! My Supplier wanted me to meet Luca wearing this mask!" Rudy panted, pushing himself up off the floor and clutching his stomach where Alice had kicked him.

"Oh God...Rudy...I'm sorry, I'm really..."

But then, came another muted crackle, the sound of frosty leaves being pulverised by heavy footsteps, from deeper in the forest. Slowly turning her head to look over her shoulder, she could just about make out the mask, the mask of the real Supplier, stark white in contrast to the darkness around it, watching on. And just like that, apologising to Rudy became significantly less important.

The melody from the concert hall a distant murmur, the light of the grounds now non-existent, Alice began to run again, though this time, she was resigned to the fact that whilst she was a half decent runner, she had been fatigued even before she'd begun attempting to kick the shit out of Rudy; she wouldn't be able to sustain her pace for much longer. Besides, the real Supplier was quite a considerable distance ahead. Her catching them had never been a viable possibility, she supposed. They were only there to see her idle triumph over believing she had, up close. Never allowing themselves to get close enough for that possibility to become a reality.

"Stop!" Alice yelled, her legs finally falling victim to a searing pain, which started at her calves and moved upwards fast until she was practically paralysed, keeling over, one hand on a sprawling tree trunk to keep her upright. "Shit!" She cried in frustration, holding a hand to her head, the Supplier's figure completely dissolving into the caliginous depths of the forest, indistinguishable from the tenebrous night surrounding them. And for a moment, she just stood there, breathing heavily and blinking back tears, which were warm in the pits of her eyes, only stopping once convinced they would not surface. It was Gemma's hand on her shoulder from behind that caused her to start and spin round to face her, the light of Gemma's phone irradiating her face, tear tracks visible on her golden cheeks.

'Did you get them?" She asked, panting and lowering her phone, Alice glowering back at her and throwing a disconsolate hand up in the air.

"No. They've gone, Gemma." She choked. "Bloody gone. We've lost them." It took every bit of composure she had left not to scream like a banshee in Gemma's woebegone face, not to throw her hand away as she placed it on Alice's arm. "What is it?" She croaked at Gemma, continuing to squint into the darkness, praying to a God whose existence she had ridiculed before that moment that the Supplier would reappear, close enough to grab with her clenched fists.

"It's Lilly..." Gemma said weakly. "She's collapsed. Once I pulled myself together, we went to follow after you but on the way out she started screaming and crying and we've called an ambulance. We didn't know what to do...there was blood....running down her leg and..." As Gemma shook her head, Alice found herself internally praying again that the conclusion she had jumped to was not the correct one. But she should have known. Making their way back to outside the chapel and watching Lilly get pulled into an ambulance on a stretcher, bawling her eyes out like a young child who'd just scraped their knee, learning what pain was for the very first time, Alice was reminded of something. Of the fact that even if that God she didn't believe in did exist, there was no point praying.

That arsehole never listened to anybody anyway.