An Episode of Remnants.

Episode Content Warnings

Please bear in mind that this work has content some listeners may find distressing, including themes of war, violence, and grief. This episode contains:

Implications of child neglect

References to corporal punishment of children (caning, specifically. Brief, non-detailed.

Mentions of verbal and emotional abuse of a child

Mentions of blood

Child death

Implications of domestic abuse (primarily of an adult woman, but mention of instance of physical abuse towards a child

Violent imagery

Animal abuse, including killing (of rats)

Accidental animal death (a dog)

Transcript

TURNING CREAKS, WHIRRING MECHANISMS

SIR
Apprentice.

APPRENTICE
Oh, sorry. I didn’t see you there.

SIR
Because I wasn’t. Am I interrupting you?

APPRENTICE
No, not at all, I was just… Doesn’t matter. What can I do you for?

SIR
I presume that was a joke.

APPRENTICE
Oh. Do you not like jokes?

SIR
Only funny ones.

APPRENTICE
Ouch.

SIR
I am generally considered to be serious.

APPRENTICE
Right. I’d believe that.

SIR
I have your criteria.

APPRENTICE
My what?

SIR
To process the remnants. I have your criteria.

APPRENTICE
Oh! Right. Of course.

SIR
Of course.

APPRENTICE
What are they?

A DISTANT HUM, AND FABRIC HITS THE SURFACE NEXT TO THE APPRENTICE

SIR
There. If that will be all.

APPRENTICE
All?! That’s not anything! It’s a couple of bits of fabric! How is that supposed to help?

SIR
You’ll see once you’ve read them.

APPRENTICE
You mean you want me to– to do that thing again?!

SIR
That is what you are here to do, apprentice.

APPRENTICE
It. It is, isn’t it?

SIR
Yes.

THE APPRENTICE HANDLES AND MOVES THE FABRIC AS HE SPEAKS.

APPRENTICE
So, what? I read this ring and then what? I’ll somehow miraculously be able to understand how to do this job properly? Are the memories here full of some guy explaining how to make a judgement?

SIR
No.

APPRENTICE
So how will this help?

SIR
You will see.

APPRENTICE
Uh, right. Okay then. You know, I’m all for getting dropped in at the deep end but– hey!? Where did you even—?! Sir?!

SIR
(distant, echoing)
Just read it.

APPRENTICE
Fine, fine.

THE APPRENTICE SIGHS

APPRENTICE
Buggar, what was I even doing? What are all these bloody envelopes, I wasn’t…? Oh, never mind.

PAPER MOVES AROUND, THEN SOMETHING MAKES A SMALL SCUTTLING SOUND

APPRENTICE
Hello?

NOTHING, EXCEPT THE DISTANT WHIRS AND CREAKS OF THE MACHINERY OF THE FIRST AND LAST PLACE

APPRENTICE
Sir?

STILL, THERE IS NOTHING.

THE APPRENTICE SIGHS. HE GETS TO HIS FEET WITH A SQUEAK OF HIS CHAIR AND WALKS THROUGH THE SHELVES, PASSING TICKING CLOCKS. HIS FOOT KNOCKS INTO A BOX AND IT RELEASES A MUSICAL TRILL.

APPRENTICE
Huh. Music boxes. Tons of them.

THE APPRENTICE MOVES THE BOX

APPRENTICE
Oh, the box is labelled. Let’s see, ‘for re-shelving’.

THE APPRENTICE COUGHS

APPRENTICE
Ugh, so much dust!

SIR
(extremely close)
Did you get distracted?

THE APPRENTICE YELPS

APPRENTICE
Sorry, just– knocked into– dusty.

SIR
Quite.

THE APPRENTICE DUSTS HIS HANDS OFF ON HIS TROUSERS

APPRENTICE
I can help you with that, if you like?

SIR
With what?

APPRENTICE
The re-shelving?

SIR
Oh. That. Would you like to?

APPRENTICE
Um. I suppose. You would have to show me where things go. Unless you just shove thing onto the shelves at random?

SIR
I’m sure that’s not how it’s done.

APPRENTICE
Right. Only phrasing it like that—

SIR
Re-shelving would be quite beyond you yet, Apprentice. You have yet to process a remnant. Where is the one I gave you?

APPRENTICE
It’s alright, it’s here.

SIR
Very good then. Where are you going?

APPRENTICE
I was following the signs back to the Processing Room, where I read the teacup in?

SIR
Ah. I see. Very good.

APPRENTICE
Was that not what I was supposed to do?

SIR
You are supposed to read the remnants.

APPRENTICE
I know, but–

SIR
To process them.

APPRENTICE
Right.

SIR
It’s really quite simple.

APPRENTICE
Well. I’ll just go, then? Shall I?

SIR
Yes.

APPRENTICE
Great.

SIR
Yes.

APPRENTICE SNIFFLES

FOOTSTEPS

THE APPRENTICE TAKES A SHORT, SHARP BREATH. THERE IS A THIN, WHISTLING WIND.

APPRENTICE
Right, the sign was– huh. Statue of a horse. Were you here before? I’m sure I’d have remembered you.

Have I come the wrong…?

Way.

THE APPRENTICE COMES TO A HALT. HE TAKES A COUPLE OF TENTATIVE STEPS FORWARD. THE WIND SCREECHES.

APPRENTICE
(his voice echoing)
Hello?

THE WIND CONTINUES TO WHISTLE

APPRENTICE
(his voice echoes)
I can’t even see the bottom.

I wonder.

A FEW FOOTSTEPS, SOME RUMMAGING

APPRENTICE
Rock with a heart on it. That’ll do.

Oh. Hang on. Sir?

Sir?

Not here. Great.

HE HURLS THE ROCK. IT WHISTLES THROUGH THE AIR. COLLIDING WITH THE EDGE OF THE PIT. IT BOUNCES LOUDLY OFF, HITTING AGAIN, AND AGAIN, GETTING FAINTER AND FAINTER.

APPRENTICE
Huh.

FABRIC RUSTLES

APPRENTICE
Is this silk?

SNIFF SNIFF

APPRENTICE
No idea. One of these looks almost new, the other one is a bit stained and ratty, and– fuck, is that? Blood? Christ. Okay, if I—

A WHOOSH OF WIND

APPRENTICE
What?!

FABRIC FLUTTERS IN THE WIND. A MURMUR OF POLITE CONVERSATION CUTLERY CLATTERS AGAINST DISHES.

When Paige walks into the dining room, her mother makes her spin in front of the guests. They coo and clap, admiring the miniature version of a formal gown she has tailored to her tiny little body. Her father scoops her up onto his hip. Paige clutches at the medals on her father’s chest, catching in the light of the chandelier. To her they look like miniature suns.

She dances until she can no longer stand, falls asleep to chamber music and polite chatter, and wakes up tucked up in her soft bed, her mother’s silk scarf against her cheek, listening to the sounds of the dawn chorus.

A WHOOSH. CHILDREN’S LAUGHTER, THE CRUNCH OF FEET ON GRASS.

A dragonfly skitters along the surface of the stream that runs at the back of Paige’s garden, behind the thicket of trees. It feels wild to her there. Four years old, this place without flowers and hedges neatly trimmed by the gardeners feels like a magic, like she might be able to fly, or that wolves might spring out at her, or she may need to fight a dragon with the magic she can feel trembling in her fingers and toes.

Paige draws signs for herself in the dirt with a stick, getting mud on the edges of her petticoats.

Distantly, she hears her nursemaid, Sarah, calling her name. ‘Coming!’ she calls.

In the corner of her eye, something zips past her through the air, wafting Paige’s hair across her face. Later her mother will tell her, tersely, it was a bird. But in Paige’s heart, she is sure it was a fairy.

A WHOOSH. THE SOUND OF SCRUBBING AND CLEANING.

Paige’s mother scolds her in rapid, incomprehensible Dutch. She is staring at a drawing done directly on the wall, shaking her head. Paige tries to hold in a little stuttering sob. The maid who is helping her wash off the drawing lightly touches her arm between scrubbing. Paige bites her lip.

Upstairs, Paige can hear her younger brother playing with his train set. To Paige, it seems obvious it was not her who drew these shaky scribbles. Her mother did not like to look at the unsteady sketches Paige showed her, but surely she’d glanced long enough to know Paige was a far better artist than this?

Besides, she was almost five now, old enough to know it was best to avoid incurring her mother’s wrath when she could.

When Paige found her little brother with her pencils, adding his own finesse to the walls of their nursery, she gasped and grabbed the colours from his hands. Barely two, Jonny watched in surprise. Paige muffled his tears by pulling him into a tight hug. She could not lift him for long, but she hoisted him up by the waist and shuffled down the hall with him, down the servants stairs to where Sarah was trying to get grass stains out of one of Paige’s petticoats.

‘Please don’t tell mother,’ Paige says.

Together she and Sarah washed the paint from Jonny’s hands and cheeks. Sarah took him upstairs, changed his shirt, and set him playing with his trains. Paige sat anxiously in the window seat of the library, a book she was not reading open in her lap, listening for her mother to notice the mess in the playroom.

In Jonny’s defence, their mother just yesterday had told him he must only paint on paper. How was he to know that wallpaper did not count? Worry had turned over in Paige’s stomach, but once the relief that her mother did not suspect this was anyone’s work besides Paige’s passed, it was replaced with indignity.

The soapy water makes Paige’s hands sting.

Her eyes sting too, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.

When she’s finished cleaning, she is sent to her room. She presses her face into her pillow and cries and cries. Her fingers find the edge of her mother’s scarf, still stashed under there. She takes it out and throws it angrily into the bottom of her wardrobe.

THE SOUND OF BIRDS AND LEAVES IN TREES

It is early morning. Paige tip-toes, barefoot, across the landing, pausing to listen for the maids downstairs, already up and preparing breakfast. She sniffs the air; they’re making something sweet. When she’s sure she hears two pairs of hands at work, she carries on down the hallway to the library, and very carefully closes the door behind herself.

If Sarah caught her, she wouldn’t be in trouble, but if it was Janet? Paige would get at least five strikes from her mother’s cane for this, and Paige hates sleeping on her front, so she’ll avoid that if she can. In her half-asleep haze last night, she thought she heard some kerfuffle, and maybe her father’s voice, though. Her mother wouldn’t get out her cane if her father was home. So this morning it was worth the risk.

From between her father’s encyclopedias, Paige slips out her sketch book, and pulls her pencils from behind Jules Verne. She climbs up onto the window seat, unlatches the window, and steps out steadily onto the sloping roof. She takes small, confident, careful steps along the tiles until she reaches the flat spot over the front porch, where she sits down.

The tiles are damp with night dew, they draw the heat fast from her feet and legs where they touch them. The air is chill, too, not enough that Paige can see her breath, but almost. The sky is lilac grey, and looking east, Paige can see a halo of light preceding the burst of the sun over the horizon.

Paige opens her sketchbook and starts to sketch out another fairy. This is the reason she keeps the sketchbook secret. Her mother has never liked Paige’s penchant for fairy stories. This one is based on the frothy white flowers which grow along the edge of the stream after it leaves their family gardens. Paige entwines tiny blooms in her curly hair, fashions a skirt for her out of overlapping leaves, and wings like a cabbage moth’s.

As she sketches, in her head, Paige thinks up the story she will tell Jonny about this fairy. She lives by the stream, she will tell him, she drinks out of snow drops and has her breakfast porridge out of acorn tops. He likes her stories, but sometimes grabs at the sketchbook in a way that makes Paige worry he will tear the pages, so she usually waits to tell him her stories when he’s been put down in his crib.

Across the gardens, into the farmland beyond her family estate, Paige hears a loud bang. It cracks through the air, so loud and sudden that she feels it as much as she hears it. She stands up, peering into the rising sun, looking for the source of the sound.

At the edge of the cornfield, she sees a man stand up and sling a rifle over his shoulder. He walks across the field, stoops down, and lifts a pheasant’s limp body towards the sky for inspection, turning it this way and that.

The man turns, and Paige recognises him; it’s her father. He spots her standing on the roof and slowly raises his free hand. There is blood on his fingers.

Paige waves back.

THE BABBLE OF A STREAM. OCCASIONAL SPLASHING FOOTSTEPS.

It is a hot summer day. The stream water has soaked into the hem of Paige’s skirt; the damp fabric slaps into her calves as she walks. The stream is almost as cold ice. The gardener, Mr Jones, told Paige it’s because it’s cave water, coming from deep, dark crack in the earth. It tastes fresher than tap water as Paige drinks it from her cupped hand. She splashes more of it on her face, trying not to get any on her sketchbook.

It is the day after easter. She spent all day yesterday at church hunting for eggs with the other children. The bright foil caught the sun and shone through the grasses and shrubs like little bright points of magic. When Paige grabbed them, they were soft in her fingers. She licked the melted chocolate right off her fingers and got it all over her face, and in her hair, which was so badly sticky that Sarah had to cut off a good three inches of it when they got home.

Paige’s mother was furious, and told her that morning she didn’t want see hide nor hair of her until sunset. That morning, Sarah had little Jonny out in the gardens, so Paige packed herself a little sandwich and an apple, put them in her satchel, and set off. She was determined to walk all the way up the stream past the edge of the garden, and find the cave the water came from.

The cold water between her toes is a relief, as the air is deadly still, and as she walks, Paige feels her hair sticking to her sweaty face. She misplaces a step on a slimy stone, scrapes her knee, and devastatingly, as she rights herself, her satchel plops into the water. Paige scrambles up the little bank, takes the sodden bread out of her pack, and tosses it into the trees.

A GUST OF WIND AND THE PATTER OF RAIN

Paige is dreadfully bored at the end of her parents party. Her uncle Floris hands her a chocolate truffle, but it tastes funny on her tongue.

‘Champagne, dear,’ he tells her with a wink.

Paige is not impressed. She fiddles with the edge of her dress. It’s expensive silk, finished with lace, all in powder blue to match her mother’s ballgown.

Paige’s mother flits about the party, laughing. She’s glamorous and beautiful, her hair shining gold, matching the medals on her father’s military jacket. Jonny is in a miniature replica of his uniform, everyone makes a great fuss of him. He is playing under the chairs at the opposite side of the room, getting dust on his little dress pants.

Paige sighs. She gets up to find Sarah. Jonny won’t listen to Paige if she warns him not to get too dirty, but he’ll listen to Sarah.

Sarah is in the kitchen, looking harried. Her eyes are ringed red like she’s been crying, but she promises Paige that she’s fine. Paige tells her about Jonny; Sarah dabs at her eyes and they set off back to the ballroom together.

Sarah pulls Jonny out from under the chairs and dusts him off. ‘That’s a good boy,’ she tells him.

Paige feels a firm grip on her arm. She’s spun around. Her mother is scowling at her. ‘What’s that on your skirt?’

Paige looks down. There’s a small brown stain; part of her uncle’s truffle must have broken off and landed there, melting into the fabric. Paige’s cheeks flush red and she balls her fists. ‘I’ll clean it off.’

‘Waste of a good dress,’ her mother whispers. ‘I don’t know why I bother.’

‘Neither do I!’ hisses Paige. She’s shocked at the words the moment the leave her.

Paige’s mother does not seem shocked. Her mouth curls into a cruel smile. ‘Insolent brat,’ she says. She slap’s Paige hard across the face so hard Paige’s ear starts to ring.

Jonny starts crying.

Paige looks at her mother in shock for a moment. Around them, everyone has stopped dancing and chatting to stare, too, but as the moment stretches on they seem to desperate to look anywhere but at Paige.

Before her mother can say anything else, Paige turns on her heel and runs out of the room. She thunders up the stairs, her chest stuttering with crying, and goes into the library, slamming the door after herself. She grabs her sketchbook out of its hiding place, and her pencils, and shoves open the door. It’s raining outside, but there’s a little cover she can sit under to hide from the worst of it.

As she creeps across the slanted tiles, there is a flash of lightning Paige jumps and drops her tin of pencils. It slides down the roof into the guttering.

Paige squats down, trying to reach for it, but can’t quite. She grabs onto the decorative iron spike at on the side of the porch roof where she usually sits. There is a crack of thunder, and Paige’s body goes rigid. The iron in her hand isn’t holding her in place anymore. She’s flying. Here sketchbook slips from her grip, the pages fluttering like wings.

There are voices.

Paige is tired.

Her cheek hurts.

Jonny is crying.

Paige cannot see him even though she’s sure her eyes are open.

She feels the cool water of the stream at the back of the house in her hair, and pushes herself up off the stones. It is a hot summer’s day and fairies zip across the surface of the water. She only has an apple for lunch.

THE APPRENTICE GASPS A STUTTERING BREATH

APPRENTICE
She’s– she’s dead! She slipped, she— she was only seven years old– why—

SIR
Hush.

APPRENTICE
Why did you you show me this?!

SIR
Criteria.

APPRENTICE
For what?!

SIR
Decisions.

APPRENTICE
She’d barely had a chance to live, she— what– that was awful, sir, please I don’t understand.

SIR
Take a moment.

APPRENTICE
Why did she have to die? What was the point, why?

SIR
Point? In death, there is never a point. Unless it involves a sharp implement.

APPRENTICE
What is wrong with you?

SIR
I suspect it comes from the lack of mass and matter.

APPRENTICE
Mass… like, church?

SIR
Interesting postulation, dear apprentice. What do you know of church?

APPRENTICE
What do I…? I suppose I don’t, not really. The little girl, she remembered— foil eggs in the grass. Stone walls. Great windows with glass images fixed in the frames. People singing.

SIR
All common in holy places. Save the foiled eggs. Those are an exception.

APPRENTICE
An egg-ception.

SIR
Indeed. You seem to have recovered.

APPRENTICE
The feelings, they sort of fade, after a while. I feel it all coming through me, I can’t stop it, the words are spilling out. It’s all so near, so bright, so loud, and then when I snap back to myself, it’s like– like—

SIR
A sudden plunging into darkness. A fall, unanticipated. A shock of sudden cold after languid heat.

APPRENTICE
I. Yeah. Not that I’d use any of them words, mind.

SIR
Would you not? How curious.

APPRENTICE
I still don’t understand why you showed me that. How is that a criteria? It was just the same as the first one, the teacup, except that little girl, she had no chance at living. No chance to show who she was. She was defiant, headstrong, she protected her little brother, but who knows what she would become.

SIR
Such observations. Very well read. Would you care to pass a judgement?

APPRENTICE
I still don’t know how.

SIR
Say the words, it will be passed.

APPRENTICE
But I don’t know what it means.

SIR
Perhaps you should see the other part of my criteria.

APPRENTICE
The other scarf?

SIR
Yes.

MOVEMENT. FABRIC MOVING.

APPRENTICE
Wait it– it’s not another scarf, it’s the same scarf, I—

WHOOSH. WIND. THE SOUND OF PLANES OVERHEAD.

Christopher sits atop his father’s shoulders. ‘Thats a type 143,’ says his father, as a plane rattles overheard.

‘What guns does that one have?’ says Christopher.

‘None,’ says his father. ‘It’s a transporter.’

‘Oh,’ says Christopher, pouting a little.

The planes’ engines judder and roar overhead.

‘Why didn’t mama come today?’

‘She’s too ashamed.’

‘Of what?’ Christopher asks.

‘To show everyone how bad she’s been,’ says his father.

The dog, Spot, barks at the sky and runs in rings around them. Christopher heard his dad telling his mama off again last night. Sometimes if Christopher chips a plate or spills his juice, his father gets so angry his whole face turns red and a little wiggly line appears between his eyebrows, like a worm’s stuck under his skin. He shouts and shouts and spit sprays all over Christophers face, and one time he shook him so hard that his head hit the wall and he had blood in his hair the next morning.

When they go home, his father tells him to take his mother a cup of tea. ‘Don’t indulge her, though.’

Christopher nods.

She’s in her bedroom. The curtains are drawn. When he opens the door, the light from the landing where he stands catches his mother’s eyes and they gleam out of the gloom. ‘Chrissy?’ she says.

He brings her tea to her in silence. As he sets it down on the bedside table, his mother grabs his arm and he flinches away.

‘You’re not hurt are you?’ she asks him.

Christopher shakes his head.

‘You can tell me,’ she whispers.

‘No!’ he says. He runs out to the landing and slams the door.

He takes a moment to catch his breath before he goes back downstairs. When he walks into the kitchen, his dad doesn’t look up from the paper. ‘Good lad,’ he says. He pulls a toffee in a shiny wrapper out of his pocket and holds it out on his outstretched palm.

Christopher hesitates, then takes it.

WHOOSH. RADIO STATIC.

Christopher lies colouring on the living room carpet. There are raised voices upstairs, but Christopher can’t hear the words, only strange, amorphous blobs of sound rising above the static on the radio. His mother turned it on and turned it up to drown out the argument, but when she left the room, she disturbed the set, and now all it’s playing is static. It makes Christophers ears itch.

Spot is on the other side of the living room door, barking over his parents’ shouts.

He’s drawing a Type 142, but sketches over the nose a pair of eyes, like a hawk’s, and on the tail, forked feathers like a swift’s. It’s a bird plane, alive, zooming through the air, and it breathes fire from it’s hinged beak. The passengers feed it coal, you have to feed it with your hand flat, like when you feed a horse, and if you’re not careful it will eat all your fingers.

Christopher draws a man screaming, blood dripping from his fingerless hand.

The door to the living room opens. Christopher’s father scoops him up into his arms, and out of the house. They go to the park, let Spot run after the ducks, and then to the pub, where Christopher sips orange juice and his father drinks pint after pint of lager. The sun sets. Christopher’s father carries him home.

The house is dark.

‘Where is mama?’ he says.

‘She’s not well,’ says Christopher’s father. ‘Go to bed, now.’

Christopher trails upstairs. He’s not sure which of his drawers has his pyjamas and he can’t work out the buttons on his shirt. He sleeps in the clothes he was wearing, listening to the music his father is playing on the radio, turned up so loud it sounds like it’s in the room with Christopher himself. Spot is barking. Now and then the neighbours slam their fists on the wall.

WHOOSH. DISTANT WAILING. ODD SOUNDS.

Christopher’s father raps his knuckles short and sharp on Christopher’s bedroom door. ‘Yes?’ says Christopher.

Next to his father in the doorway is a young woman. More of a girl, really. She has soft blonde hair and looks to not have slept for weeks. Around her neck is a pale, silk scarf. Christopher’s father says her name is Sarah, and she is going to be his nanny.

The next morning, Sarah makes porridge and sniffles as she stirs it. ‘Are you sick?’ says Christopher’s father. Sarah shakes her head short and fast, tells him no, she just slept badly.

Christopher has never had porridge before. It sits heavy and grey in his bowl, holding its shape.

‘I don’t like it,’ he tells her.

Sarah’s eyes swim. ‘Oh.’

The front door slams as Christopher’s father leaves for work, and Sarah jumps.

That afternoon, Christopher catches Sarah standing in the garden, crying into the little white apron she has over her brown skirt and grey jumper. She sees him watching and smiles at him. ‘It’s okay,’ she tells him.

Christopher steps out, apprehensive. ‘Before I came here I looked after a little girl,’ says Sarah.

‘Oh,’ says Christopher. ‘Did she grow up?’

‘She died.’

Christopher chews his lip. ‘You didn’t kill her, did you?’

Sarah’s eyes go wide. ‘What an awful thing to say.’

Christopher shrugs. ‘Just asking.’

He picks up Spot and runs back inside.

WHOOSH. BICYCLE BELLS AND TRAFFIC.

Christopher has grown long and lanky. On the rare occasions his father comes home, he calls him a beanpole. He shouts at Sarah. ‘What are you feeding him?’ Sarah never answers. She just blinks her wide, watery eyes and carries on with whatever she’s been doing.

In order to try and fix what his father calls ‘the situation’, Sarah gives Christopher three glasses of milk a day. He’s supposed to do thirty jumping jacks every morning and another thirty before he goes to bed. So far, it does not seem to be helping.

Christopher doesn’t mind. He likes being slender; it’s easier to slip through gaps in the fence. There’s dense foliage between the garden and a little stream that runs back there, and it’s often full of rats. Christopher likes to trap them.

That morning, he darts over to check the latest trap he’d designed. He’d made a seesaw out of bits of wood, which dumped the rats into a bucket which he’d half-filled with oil.

The rats inside are shiny, bobbing on the oil’s surface, stiff with death. He fishes them out with a stick and throws them into the stream. The oil streaks patterns that glimmer on the water.

‘Christopher!’ Sarah calls.

He runs the short distance to the fence and slips through it.

Sarah is standing on the top of the steps at the back door. She’s wearing a grey cardigan, the colour of a rat’s fur, and her pale silk scarf.

A sudden gust of wind catches the scarf. Sarah fumbles for it but it escapes her fingers and billows down the lawn like a patterned ghost. Christopher darts forward and catches it, but falls onto his face, grinding the scarf into the dirt. When he lifts it, the white fabric is stained brown.

Sarah’s expression is aghast when she takes the scarf back. She turns and hurries into the house without a word.

Christopher thinks of the rats bobbing further and further down the stream, and wonders if something will eat them before they reach the ocean.

WHOOSH. RAIN. A DOG IS BARKING.

Christopher is drawing, pressing pencil hard against the page. He’s been doodling for hours, trying to design a new rat trap. The last one was made of wood and the rats gnawed through it. They also chewed through the plastic tub he’d used the time before that. He’s considering going back to buckets; its the curved surfaces, they make it harder for the rats to get their teeth into the material, he thinks.

He wonders how many he could fit into a copper bathtub.

He runs out of space and turns the page over. For a moment he lies there considering, chewing the end of his pencil.

When he brings it down and starts to sketch he’s not really thinking about it, it’s as though his hand is acting on its own.

‘Christopher, what is that?’ Sarah is standing over him, holding a glass of squash in one hand, the other slowly raising to cover her mouth.

The drawing of Sarah is not great but it is recognisable. Her head is raised above her naked body, the disconnection jagged as though torn.

Christopher slams his sketchbook shut and tries to run, but Sarah grabs his sleeve. She yanks the book from his hands.

‘That’s mine!’ he shouts, but Sarah isn’t listening. She’s opening the book, turning the pages. She gasps.

‘What are these?’

‘Rat traps,’ says Christopher.

‘Go to your room,’ Sarah says.

‘What?’

‘Your room! Go!’

Christopher tries to reach for his book but Sarah holds it away from him.

Christopher’s face is hot. He draws back the hand he was reaching for his book with and slaps her hard across the face.

Sarah gasps. She staggers back from Christopher. She hold the notebook under her arm and runs from the kitchen, from the house, out into the street.

Christopher watches her pass the living room window, tears streaming down her cheeks.

In the middle of the night, Christopher hears the dog barking. He opens his eyes but stays flat and still in his bed. He hear’s his father’s voice, and Sarah’s, through the floor. He can’t make out the words but he can tell both of them are angry.

Christopher hears the jangle of his father’s belt buckle.

Spot goes silent. Sarah screams once, and then she’s silent too, except for occasional whimpers.

WHOOSH. LEAVES CRUNCHING THROUGH DIRT.

When the school bell rings Christopher bursts out of his seat like a racing dog freed from its starting kennel. His teacher is shouting, ‘the bell is not for you, it’s for me!’ but Christopher is not listening. His mind is fixed on his latest trap. Two weekends ago, one of the rats made its way up into the garden and Christopher’s father saw it. He went out and bought a large tub of blue pellets; rat poison.

The poison came in a yellow and blue cylinder which is dad put on the high shelf in the shed. Christopher has been tall enough to reach there for a year, now. He snuck into the shed when he knew Sarah was busy with the laundry, grabbed a handful, and made his new trap.

Now he’s jostling through the groups of other children some older, some younger, as they fight their way out of the classroom. Some of the older boys sneer at Christopher, but he doesn’t care, hasn’t for years. He overhears an argument as he’s passing through the school gates; ‘my dad could beat up your dad!’ Christopher almost laughs out loud. His dad would kill both of them.

It’s a short walk home from school. Ever since Sarah saw his sketchbook, he’s been doing it alone. Before his mum was gone, she’d meet him on the corner, standing by herself, a little way apart from the other mums. They’d give her funny looks, the way they give Christopher funny looks now.

Some days Christopher would dwell for a moment on the corner where his mum used to be, but on this Monday he’s in a hurry. He spent the weekend building a brand new trap for the rats, and he’s keen to see if any of them have fallen foul of it yet.

He bursts through the front door and hurtles through the house, not even glancing at Sarah, who’s standing in the kitchen. He ignores her when she calls his name and bolts straight down the side of the shed, through the gap in the fence, and into the wilds along the stream.

He looks in the trap; it’s empty.

Disappointment curdles like milk in his stomach. He kicks the side of the trap. He begins to trudge back to the house when he spots something on the ground amidst the rocks and the ivy. There, between the stones, is a dead rat. Its mouth is blue from the poison pellets.

Christopher prods it with the toe of his shoe; it’s stiff with rigour mortis. Through the face, into the garden itself, he spots another, and another, and then, a small puddle of sick. And another. And another.

There, down the side of the house where they keep the bins, lies Spot, on her side. Her eyes are glassy, seeing nothing. Around her head is a puddle of sick. Splattered through it, bits of dead rat.

Behind Christopher, Sarah gasps. He turns around.

‘What did you do?’ she asks.

‘It was an accident,’ he says, reflexively.

‘You’re a monster,’ Sarah whispers.

Christopher slaps her, hard, across the face.

Sarah lifts her hand to cover her cheek, her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide in disbelief.

Christopher turns and bolts down the garden. He squeezes through the fence. He’s not thinking; he can’t think. He storms down the stream, water getting into his shoes. He doesn’t care. His heart is racing. He didn’t mean to kill Spot. He didn’t.

He keeps walking. If he just keeps walking, he won’t have to think. He won’t have to go home. He won’t have to. He won’t–

He’s foot slips forward and there’s a strange moment where he feels like he’s flying; he sees light catch in the droplets of water flung up around him. He sees the rock before he hits it, but doesn’t have time to consider it before he does.

A LOUD CRACK AND A THUD.

THE APPRENTICE GASPS, HE BREATHES SHAKILY.

SIR
So?

APPRENTICE
Discard, fucking discard.

SIR
Ah. I see. Why?

APPRENTICE
I– I. I don’t. Maybe don’t. Let me think.

SIR
Yes, you can do that, if you like.

APPRENTICE
Can I do that alone?

SIR
If you wish.

END

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