Ever Dundas - Goblin

I was pretty damn tired in term time; up at the crack of dawn to look after the animals, then there was school and straight into chores when I got home, then supper and homework. After homework, when I was in bed, I’d sometimes write stories. Some I made up, but they were mostly the stories Pigeon told me about the ghosts and the lizard people, so I would never forget them. I didn’t have much paper so I’d write them really small in the front and back pages of The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine . Once or twice a week I’d write letters or postcards home, to ma and da and David. I always wrote my address on them and asked them to write, but they never did. I figured they were busy with the war in London. I told David I was at the sea, I told him he should come and we could live together by the sea. I wrote less and less. Tom complained about the cost of the stamps and the wasting of paper and I had more and more chores to do anyway.

On top of all that Tom taught us to shoot. I took to it like I was born for it. John wasn’t any good. ‘John,’ I said, ‘you’re shit-bollocks at this,’ and he shoved me so that I fell over in chicken shit. His head snapped back when he laughed and I was up like a shot, punching his face. He wasn’t laughing then, but spitting blood into the chicken shit, one of his teeth floating in the shit-blood mess. It glistened like a jewel.

‘I was just saying it like it is,’ I said, my anger gone. ‘I can teach you to do it better.’

He was crying by now and Tom came over and didn’t even ask what happened, but just took me by the ear. I’d seen what he’d done to that girl at the station so I expected a beating, but he just dragged me by the ear and shut me in the shed. He let me out in the evening, sat me down and said, ‘No one damages my property.’

Just like that. Not even pretending. I kept my mouth shut. I’d said to Isabella, who wasn’t even there at the station, I’d said to her I knew how to look after myself, so I had to be smarter and not mess things up. I understood Tom. As soon as he said what he said, I understood. He would look after us and treat us well as long as were useful to him, as long as we didn’t take the Lord’s name in vain and knew how to be good property. I knew how to work hard and I knew all about churches and God and I could play the hardworking God worshipper if it meant a good life.

‘You’ve got to compromise sometimes, Goblin,’ David had said to me. ‘You have to allow a little leeway,’ and I knew now what he meant. I knew he had given me that advice so I wouldn’t go and mess up and just be stomped on. ‘You’re clever,’ he said. ‘You’ll figure it out.’

So I nodded when Tom said no one damages his property and I said, ‘It won’t happen again, sir.’ I could tell at once that I needn’t have even said that because it didn’t need to be said, it just wouldn’t happen again , he was that sure. I could tell too that by saying it I might as well have written in my own blood that it wouldn’t happen again. John was a pain and not being able to pummel him was going to be hard work, but then I thought maybe it would build character. Maybe I shouldn’t just pummel people all the time. It’s not as if I have anything to prove. So, I thought, right. I’ll do this. I’ll build character and be all stoic-lipped.

But I did ask for our work to be broken up between us, saying that we’d get things done quicker if we each had our own tasks instead of doing things together. Tom thought for a moment, then nodded. He sat us both down later that evening and told us what tasks we’d each do and I could tell John wasn’t happy but at least he didn’t know it was my idea and he had to obey Tom so that was that. I got my chores done a lot quicker since he wasn’t in the way and I didn’t have to do absolutely everything.

John was still useless at shooting, though.

‘Luke,’ Tom said. ‘You sort him out.’

So I had to teach the idiot to shoot, but he was terrible and he was pretending to be even more terrible just to provoke me. He’d worked out that I’d had some kind of warning and couldn’t hit him, no matter what, so he called me names, telling stories where horrible things happened to me, stories about my origin as Goblin and how my parents must have hated me, how everyone hated me. Sometimes all this rattled my stoic cage, but I just thought of Isabella and David and their advice and mostly managed to ignore him. I’d go into my head so that I didn’t even hardly hear him, he was just a drone, like the insects, except I liked insects.

That was another thing – he didn’t like insects so he killed them and tortured them and left them alive all messed up and broken and I can’t even begin to tell you how badly I wanted to pummel him. I was stoic-lipped and tried my very best to make sure he didn’t see how much it bothered me, made sure he didn’t see how much I loved insects, because then I knew he would get worse, I knew it would be another thing for provoking me and more insects would get hurt so I stayed quiet even though I wanted to rescue the insects and pummel him and I got thinking that this compromising wasn’t as great as David had made out because the insects were still getting hurt and I was still getting hurt because it made me so damn sad and angry so what was the point if I was sad and angry anyway and I was thinking maybe I’d be better off out of this situation away from the pretend parents and the Idiot.

That’s when I met her.

Though, I’d met her before. I’d seen her get her head cracked against the station wall and I’d seen her a couple of times at school and in the town. She looked like some kind of angel, that’s what she looked like, with her bouncing curly black hair that sparkled in the sun. She had rosy cheeks and green eyes and she was the most beautiful thing. I don’t know how adults know when they fall in love, but I thought that was maybe what it felt like, the way I felt when I saw her, and between my legs I was all a-tingle like when I played with myself, and I imagined her, I imagined what she looked like playing with herself, and then she said, ‘You fucking shits.’

I squinted at her, confused.

‘You fucking stinking shits.’

I turned and saw John torturing a spider, pulling all its long legs off. She barrelled towards him and punched him and I reached out to stop her, thinking he’s property and I needed to protect the property and bloody hell was she gonna be in all kinds of trouble but then I realised she didn’t belong to Tom so maybe he couldn’t touch her and maybe she’d be okay. I smiled. Weeks of anger just melted away as I watched her punching and kicking John. When she finished she stomped right on that spider, putting it out of its misery because it was just all messed up beyond repair. She ground that spider into the dirt and looked at me with the most vicious look anyone has ever given me, even more vicious than ma, and she said, ‘You goddamn son of a whore stinking shit.’

Then she was off, before I even had a chance to explain, before I even had a chance to tell her I thought she was some kind of angel, like you get in the Revelation book, all powerful and beautiful and you just don’t mess with those angels and I wanted to be on her side. I wanted her to love me.

But she was gone, and she thought I was some sort of spider mutilator. It really ate away at me, right down in my belly, that she thought I would have anything to do with the Idiot if I had a choice. I wanted to explain. I played it out in my head over and over, changing small things here and there, but she would always listen, listen quietly to my whole story and then she’d take me in her arms and she’d kiss me on the head with those rose red lips and I would melt away, drifting. ‘My angel,’ I’d say, ‘my angel.’