Читать книгу Tuesday Falling - S. Williams - Страница 7

The boys pile onto the tube, all drop-crotch trousers, and Jafaican whine. Their eyes are hard and shiny from too much speed laced with too little mephedrone. Their clothes scream outsider whilst looking desperate to fit in. They want to be seen separate, but together. Little boys in grown-up bodies, confused and broken by a society they can’t keep up with, and so try to laugh at instead. It’s pathetic really. If they weren’t so dangerous I might try to take them home and mother them.

But me, a mother? I don’t think so. The last time I was a mother I was fourteen, and it worked out just fine for about fifteen minutes.

There are six of them, these boys. The youngest is maybe thirteen, and the oldest about sixteen. If you added up their IQs the total wouldn’t even equal my shoe size, and yet they think they’re so clever.

I love messing with boys like them. They see me sat in the corner of the carriage, a little Gothette. A tiny emo. They look at my army satchel and they think, ‘poetry book’. They don’t think, Columbine.

Actually, I’m giving them too much credit. They don’t think at all. They function on crowd-brain. Follow the leader. Seek out the weak.

The weak. That’s me. Five foot fuck-all and all dressed in black, like I’ve got nothing better to do with my time than watch The Matrix, and make pretty pictures on my arm with a blade. A pretty girl, pretty fucked-up.

Ripe for the plucking.

Come on then, boys.

Pluck me.