In Living Memory

4 - Robyn and Elektra

4 - Robyn and Elektra

My vision is too hazy for my liking. It's still dark, but everything sort of has a blur around it so nothing is clear. When I rub my stinging eyes, it's not any better. In fact, it's worse.

I become aware of the fact that I am leaning heavily against an extremely hard wall. My clothes are soaked and I feel sickness settling in my throat and the pit of my stomach. It hits me that I have no idea where on earth I am, my clothes are soaked, and I'm shivering like crazy. When I press my jaws together, my teeth chatter madly.

My eyes are stinging so badly. I lift a numb hand to rub them and then I look around me. I'd say it's early in the morning, because the sky is a dark, dark bluish grey - not black anymore. The sun is nowhere in sight, and it's still chilly. I'm in an alleyway, the walls on either side a faded, miserable grey. I've seen the brickwork before. I know I have. I stare around at all the dustbins and wooden boxes, and place a hand on the slimy concrete beneath me, trying to heave myself up.

I swear I hear my bones creaking.

I feel like I'm an elderly person and my joints haven't been used in years. I slide up the wall, having to go at an extremely snail-like pace because the pain in my joints is unbearable. I squeeze my eyes shut in agony.

Just as I hear the sound of a can being kicked around.

I open my eyes quickly, my heart thumping. It can't be less than ten metres away. I look to my left, where it's coming from, and see there is a wire gate, reaching about three times my height. I take a step towards it, feeling my heart banging hard against my ribcage, and sounding in my ears.

Then I hear the voices.

". . . They get thicker everyday here."

"Still gotta be careful though."

It's two girls, both with strong London accents, the first speaker with a slightly lower voice than the second. I freeze in my path, with one foot in front of the other, listening. You know when you try to imagine how someone looks by the sound of their voice? Well I'm trying to do that now.

"Pass us one," says the one with the lower voice.

The other girl has a voice a few notes higher, as she replies, "You owe me like twenty quid."

"Shut up, you say it enough times a day. I'm dreaming that these days. It's getting on my nerves, Lektra."

As the smell of cigarette smoke brushes against my nostrils, making me want to gag, I wonder what type of name Lektra is.

I step back a little, wondering how loud I would be if I tried to get away.

I'm waiting for them to start talking to each other again so that I won't be heard through silence. So I can sprint home freely through the drab morning air and curl up on the window seat in the kitchen with a hot chocolate and still get shouted at by my mum and dad but it wouldn't matter because they'd be there, instead of this cruel world over at The Grey Areas.

But silence doesn't come - instead two dark figures emerge from behind the grey wall of the building with cigarette smoke encircling them in the cold, night-morning air. I bend down quickly behind an old metal dustbin and as my heart beats in the roof of my mouth I hear the clanking of chains.

And then the girl with the deeper voice grumbles, "You know every day I hope and I hope and this thing is never open."

"Yeah-"

"Hey, hey!"

"What?" The other girl, Lektra's, voice sounds pouty and fed up. As if she's lost all hope of life.