" I saw the flowers running along her leg.  For some reason I’d expected them to have wilted along with the rest of her.  They weren’t.  They were still bright and fresh, in complete contrast to the woman whose skin they decorated."

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Twelve months can fly by.  Twelve months can feel as if Time is running away from you, a huge grin beaming as it looks back over its shoulder and cries: “Catch me if you can!”

You’d try to run after it, grasping arms reaching out, but it would be too fast, too evasive.  In the end you’d have to resign yourself to the simple fact that Time had escaped you and the year was over.

Twelve months can also seem like an eternity.  Instead of sprinting off into the distance, Time decides to play hide and seek, sneaking in the shadows, giggling as you hunt about aimlessly, knowing you’ll eventually give up and accept Time is too slippery and tomorrow may as well be a year away.

And you do.  Either way, you do.  Time waits for no man, my Dad used to say.  Whatever you did, it would go at its own speed and be as fast or as painfully slow as it saw fit.  Time had its own agenda and you could be pretty sure you weren’t even in the ‘Any Other Business’ section.

When you’re waiting for something, twelve months is a very long time.  When you’re waiting for the one chance to seek retribution for your parents’ death, twelve months is an infinite loop of day and night you think will never end.

I saw a film, once.  Groundhog Day.  Twelve months, when you want to kill someone, can feel like that.  Except I couldn’t play the piano or carve ice sculptures.  I did, however, feel as if every waking morning was a replica of the previous day’s.  The same dawn chorus of mocking birdsong.  The same early shiver as the heat of the sunrise struggled to permeate through my clothes and flesh and into my bones to warm me up from the inside out.  The same pangs of hunger as I tried to remember the last time I had eaten.

I wasn’t the only one.  I wasn’t the only person to have been cast aside by the aftershocks of the Purge and be left wandering the streets as the country strained to rebuild all that had been burned out, knocked down and blown up.

It was almost shocking to realise just how many people just wanted to see a big fire or witness an explosion.  Perhaps the spark of delinquency which flickered inside most honest to goodness people, and remained locked away in a cell guarded by Conscience, didn’t need that much to fan it into a roaring inferno.

Insurance companies had collapsed under the weight of a million claims and folk had been left to face the reconstruction of their homes and companies alone.

As such, a great many couldn’t face it.  Over the course of the following year, a great many had to turn their face away and become part of the growing swarm of the homeless.  So called Cardboard Communities sprang up in fields and wastelands, areas left unattended by those who could no longer maintain them.  Communities alike in one, unassuming way.  They had little left apart from the clothes on their backs and each other.

And, still, the Purge was seen to be a success.

In a way, I suppose it was.  People in the communities had nothing left to steal.  Killers had murdered those they wanted to and those they just felt like slaughtering because they could.  Later, a baby boom would come from the number of rapes committed, which would further drain an already exhausted government.  They had, I supposed, got it out of their system.  The number of arrests for anything from petty theft to the Big M had reduced dramatically.

Throughout the recovery anyway.  Everyone was too bothered about themselves and rebuilding what was left of their lives to worry about anyone else.  If you knew who had stabbed your brother or stolen your car, you ignored it.  What was the point?  A wave of grief had broken over the country and people were treading water, trying to remain afloat.  You didn’t covet what you didn’t have or what had been taken from you if you kept dipping below the surface of the tsunami and were struggling to catch your breath.

Besides, in my case at least, there was always next year.

But before all that – in fact, 11 months and 28 days before the next Purge - I discovered I knew how to steal.

Prior to this date, I hadn’t tried.  I had no need to.  My parents, God rest their peppered souls, had provided me with pretty much everything I’d needed.  If I wanted something – food, clothing, a bike, a console – they were there, within reason.  As I grew older, my needs became simpler.  As my friends asked their parents for the latest fashions or technologies, I was happy with my books and films.  I liked to escape into other worlds, other lives, other destinies.

As such, walking into a shop and walking out with something I hadn’t paid for didn’t enter into my head.  But now, I was homeless.  Yes, I still had a home, a house where I’d lived, slept and been part of a family.  I had no inclination to return, however.  Whether the bodies of my parents had been removed by the after-Purge clean-up crews or whether they still laid there, infested with maggots and providing rotting food for any stray dogs who might venture by, my home had had the heart shot out of it.  It was, now, a skeleton.  A bare-boned carcass I had no wish to step inside of.  It would echo through me, the ghost of the life I’d had up to a couple of days previously haunting me, teasing with me with memories, hoping to pilfer what scrap of a soul I still held onto.

People were still reeling, so soon after the Purge.  The cardboard communes were only taking their first faltering steps to becoming actual communities.  They were merely groups of newly-nomadic waifs who had nowhere else to go.  Many were attempting to board up broken windows and put out still smouldering embers in their houses, mistakenly believing they could continue with their happy lives as if a switch had been flicked and life was, once again, normal.

I couldn’t do that.  My life was going to be far from normal from then on.  My parents had been shot in front of me.  The man who pulled the trigger had laughed.  His laugh had been so relaxed it had, under the circumstances, seemed colder than the warmth such a calm laugh should have felt like.  It had an edge of frost running along its edge, a chill sharpness only intensified by the composure he held so close.  Normal was a concept so alien to me, I could imagine men in black hunting it down and locking it away for dissection and experimentation.

I was hungry.  Very hungry.  I hadn't eaten since our meal on the night before the Purge had commenced, and I’d vomited that up.  Sausage, mash, peas and gravy.  A fine example of a last supper.  At first, I didn’t think of food at all.  I was lost in thoughts I couldn’t direct or hold on to.  It was as if my mind had fled my body to go hide in a corner and mourn whilst the rest of me picked my way through the wreckage.

When I awoke that morning, the sun was shining brightly.  It was already warm and a mist was rolling around me as the dew from the night steamed and rose like spirits floating to heaven.

For a moment, I wished I could do the same.  Then I realised I was thinking and blinked.  Not that I’d noticed I wasn’t thinking, of course.  I simply came back into myself and perceived I’d somehow been absent.  I didn’t know, exactly, where I was.  I wasn’t sure of the day.  I could figure out the time from the feel of the day.  It felt fresh.  Reborn.

Then I remembered what had happened and I cried.  I sobbed.  My face was streaked with tears which, when I later looked at my reflection in a window, seemed to scar my face with the memory of my parents as they carved their way through the dirt.

I didn’t know I was dirty.  I was never dirty.  I was almost fastidious about my personal hygiene.  Once, a couple of years previously, I couldn’t take a bath or wash because of a water supply problem.  My friends at school had called me smelly when I told them (I learned to not say much about anything after that).  I wasn’t smelly at all, but I took it to heart and ensured I was always clean from then on.

I looked at my hands and saw mud under my fingernails.  Ingrained muck on the palms of my hands.  The knees of my jeans were scuffed.  I couldn’t think what had happened to get me in that state, but my stomach was joining in the chorus of birdsong.  I needed to eat.

Normally, I’d go to the kitchen.  I’d open the fridge or go to the cupboard for some cereal.  I didn’t have that luxury anymore.  I didn’t have a fridge or a cupboard.  I didn’t have a house.

I looked around me.  I was in a back garden.  It was long with a well kept lawn and borders which were covered in so many flowers I wasn’t certain where one type stopped and another began, apart from the sudden, somehow fierce changes in colour.  There was a tall apple tree hanging above me, threatening to remind me how Newton became famous.  I could, quite easily, have stretched up and pulled one of the fruits from the tree and taken a bite.  Unfortunately, I’d done that very same thing once when I was younger.  When I looked down at the apple, there was the half of something which still wriggled poking up at me.  Luckily I hadn’t chewed, so spat out the contents of my mouth.

I’d never picked fruit from a tree since and the extra protein I might gain from trying again didn’t tempt me to have a go.  I looked towards the house.  I guessed, at one time, it would have been regarded as ‘posh’ to someone such as me who went to an ordinary school and had a fairly decent but equally ordinary three-bedroomed end terrace.  A huge conservatory reached out into the garden and an ornate patio spread around, leading a winding way through the grass to a raised decked area to my left.  On the decking was a massive barbeque and a glass topped table with half a dozen chairs neatly tucked around.

Of course, with every window of the conservatory smashed, most of the windows to the house either broken or cracked and a chair balanced precariously through the bay window of the back room, not quite being able to decide if it wanted to be inside or out, the ‘posh’ aspect had faded somewhat.

I didn’t recognise the house, not that I would, necessarily, from the back.  I didn’t make a habit of fence-hopping through people’s back gardens as a rule.  I certainly hadn’t been here before, I knew.  Pushing myself to my feet, unsteadily leaning against the apple tree for support, I decided to answer my stomach’s pleas.

Breakfast was the most important meal of the day.  This had been drummed into me ever since I knew what breakfast actually was.  It gets your metabolism going, my parents said.  They told me this when I was only just learning what fingers and tootsy-toes were, so I had no idea why they’d think I’d want my metabolism to go anywhere.  Surely, if it was mine, I should be able to keep it and it shouldn’t be going anywhere?  My first port of call for such a fine dining extravaganza, apart from the tree I was using as a temporary crutch, had to be the kitchen of the house.

I made my way slowly in the direction of the conservatory.  With my mind missing any number of hours or days, I didn’t know how I might be greeted once I’d stepped inside.  When I reached the large, gaping French doors, edged with splinters of glass which strained towards me, desperate to kiss my wrists, I paused.  I couldn’t imagine someone still being inside now, but I wasn’t sure and didn’t want to be accosted as I stepped into the darkness inside.

The light seemed as afraid as I was to venture within.  A gloomy dusk clung to the room beyond the conservatory as if the fury from the other night hung about still, hesitant to give up its hold on the interior of the house to the daylight.

A trail of blood, dripped like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs, led from the doors I stood at to the inner door.  Whether this trail led in or out was something I was reluctant to dwell on.  I couldn’t see anything on the path outside.  Perhaps the sun had evaporated it as it was doing to the dew on the grass.  I knew it didn’t happen like that.  The sun could steal away the water in blood, but the rest, the plasma and so on, would remain.  I did, often, listen in biology class.  The lack of any trail on my side of the doors was a mystery.

Maybe it indicated someone was hurt at the doors and went inside, leaving a path for the potential killer to follow.  Maybe the injured victim was still inside.

Maybe the killer was.

If either were true, one would need help and, I hoped, the other wouldn’t turn on me.  The Purge was over.  Crime was, once again, illegal.  If it had the desired effect, the wiliness to cause harm or to commit any misdeeds was gone, washed away by the surge of anger which had smashed through the country.

If it didn’t, I needn’t worry about breakfast.

Or lunch.

I knocked on the rim of the door and waited.  If there’d been any sort of reply, whether it be a “Come in,” or a “Get lost,” I’d do the latter.  I didn’t feel like facing anyone just yet.  I felt like part of me was still back home, sitting with my parents.  I felt like another part was still asleep under the apple tree.  I was disjointed and being personable to anyone was not in my repertoire.  I needed to wait until the various pieces of me had found each other.  Then I might be able to say “Hi,” or even “Get lost.”

There was no answer.

The silence was a heartbeat in my ears.  It thumped in time with my own and made my hands shake.

Come on.  Get a grip.  What else was I going to do?  Wander the streets until I found another empty house and faced the same dilemma?  No.  This was it.

Now or never.

I pushed the handle.  Yes, I could easily have stepped through, but the slivers looked as hungry as me.  The door wasn’t locked.  I stepped inside.  My short chat with myself had failed to boost my confidence, but it had served to spur me along.  I didn’t pause at the entrance to the house proper.  I walked right on through as if I’d lived there all my life.

The room was a kitchen.  Units which looked brand new, seemingly untouched by whatever whirlwind had shattered all the windows, lined the walls.  A large double-doored fridge, the kind with a drinks dispenser on the outside, was to one side and an equally big cooking range (which my mother would have died for – if she hadn’t died) was in front of me.  To my right, beneath a window which had limped to victory with merely a corner-to-corner crack, was the sink.  Taps.

Water!

I turned the tap on.  There was a pause, the water wanting to tease me, holding back to allow my sudden thirst to increase with each passing millisecond, then a gurgle and splutter.  Then the water flowed.  I opened my mouth and leaned forward, taking long gulps.  After a few moments, I stood again and turned off the tap.

The rehydration seemed to wash me through, freshening my insides and pulling the disjointed parts of me together.  I could think again.

A quick raid of the cupboards revealed a minor treasure trove of goodies.  Half a loaf of still fairly fresh bread.  A couple of bananas and three apples.  The fridge was neatly filled with cooked meats, butter, vegetables and more.  On one shelf there were some cans of cold drink.  I grabbed an assortment of treats and sat in the middle of the floor, stuffing my face.

I’d never eaten like an animal before.  I used knives and forks and spoons.  I drank from a glass, I ate from a plate.  Now, I could have been a dog or a pig.  Any graces I might normally have had were absent.  My mouth was so full I was almost choking, but I didn’t notice.  I needed food.  I needed something that reminded me I was a person, even though I ate it like a beast.

Satisfied, I leaned back against one of the cupboards.  I breathed slowly.  What was I going to do?  Wander aimlessly?  Stay where I was?  Could I stay where I was?  What if the owner came back?  What if they’d just gone out for milk?

No.  I had to move on.  Figure it out as I went.  Figure out how to find Tom.  How to let him feel what it was like to be my parents.  After he’d felt what it was like to be me.

I moved into the next room.  One wall was covered in shelves, each laden with books.  A brown leather sofa was against one wall and a television was hung on the wall opposite.  It was still in one piece, but was hanging down on one side.  I switched it on.

Morning TV.  I’d never seen the attraction of inane chat and fashion I’d never seen anyone ‘real’ wear.  Still, it kept my mother happy and, I assumed many others too.  The presenters were smiling, their teeth too white and their tans too fake.  It was a normal day.  It was just another normal day.  An actor from a soap was talking about his latest storyline.  The date and time was in the top corner, beneath the sunshine logo of the programme.

Three days.  Three days since the Purge and already the media had glossed it over better than any one-coat non-drip might manage.  I turned the television off.  It swung slightly and I held it for a moment for it to rid itself of any urges to fall.

“Who’s there?”

A voice.  Old  but weighted with a measure of gravel which added a strength I didn’t want to test.  Upstairs.  Creaks on the stairway.  Coming down.

Grabbing as much of the food as I could carry, I ran back out of the door and into the garden.  My choice was made for me.  A gate to the side, next to a garage, hung half open.  I ran through it, dropping something which I didn’t feel the need to stop and pick up.  I turned up the street and didn’t stop until my breath burned in my chest and my thighs burned in sympathy.

It was then I noticed the world around me.  Cars were still where they’d stopped, or been stopped by another colliding with them.  Some houses looked as if they’d completely missed the action, as if they’d dotted out of existence for a time and popped back once the Purge was over.  I guessed the security hadn’t been circumvented everywhere.  Such houses stood side by side with their beaten brethren.  Others were blackened by fire.  One was struggling to remain after having a bus crash into its front room.

 Amid the chaos, people were walking.  They were talking.  Chatting and smiling and living.

They were ignoring.

I felt like shouting out to them.

“Hey!  Open your eyes!  Look around you!  Look what you've done!”

I didn't.  I thought they needed to remain oblivious.  They needed to carry on and pretend all was well.

If only.

Once I could breathe again, I tried to find a street sign to get some idea of where I was.  I found one quickly and was surprised to discover how far away I was from home.  Grimsby and Cleethorpes were separated by a street.  On one side of the street, more or less, you were in one town.  Cross over and you were in the other.  It wasn’t quite as simplistic as that, but effectively, they were conjoined.  Without being aware of where I’d been going or what I was doing, I’d migrated across, far into Cleethorpes.

My location didn’t really matter.  I wasn’t going to go home.  I no longer had one.  Still, at least I knew where I was, even if I didn’t know where I was going.

“You ok?”

I turned.  A tall man with a stomach which had long since given up trying to stay within the confines of his belt and had moved on to strain at the buttons of his shirt was frowning at me.

“Sure,” I said.  I thought I was.  I thought I was the only one who was ok.

“You look lost,” he said, resting his hand on his copious belly.  “You still got your house?”

“My house?”

“Yes, mate.  Your house.  I have to say, I was lucky.  They all passed by mine.  It probably didn’t look as inviting as those next door.  Felt insulted, really.  I look after my place.”

I wanted to get away.  He didn’t seem to be threatening or any shade of shifty, but I didn’t want to talk.  I just wanted to be going… somewhere.

“OK.”

“Is that a yes or a no?” he asked.  I’d forgotten he’d asked a question.

“Erm, it’s a no.”  I could have said the opposite.  It would have stopped the conversation right there.  But, why lie?  It wouldn’t matter to him, anyway.  The question was probably rhetorical.  It would be like he was asking how I was.  You say yes, even if you’re not.  It was just one of those things.  You didn’t really want an answer, it was more out of politeness.  No-one ever said no, they weren’t alright.  You knew the other person wasn’t asking because they actually wanted to know.

“Thought so.  You and a load more.  Still, if it keeps crime off the streets, I suppose it was worth it, eh?”

Now that was a question I could very well have answered, but I doubted he’d have wanted my particular answer.

“I guess.”

“Come on mate.  You can crash at mine.  Me and the missus have a spare room.  The son’s at Uni.  Or he was.  Ain’t heard from him.  Not for a couple of days.  Not since the Purge.”

Oh come on!  How could I refuse that?  He’d laid the missing son at my feet and was daring me to step on over.  I couldn’t.  My parents had brought me up too well and I was now paying the price.

So I followed him.  We made small talk.  The weather.  The speed with which things were being cleaned up.  Got to have it all spick and span, he said.  Can’t leave it shadowing the sun.

His name was Frank.  His wife, a fussy waif of a woman, was Wendy.  They didn’t hear from their son again, although one of his friends did get in touch.  Their son, Daz (never Darren), had been stabbed.  The friend who’d been kind enough to phone had been the one who’d stabbed him.

But that was ok.  It was during the Purge.  It didn’t count.

I stayed there, at their insistence and my own compassion, for another ten months.  I wasn’t a surrogate son and they weren’t my fill-in parents.  They were more like my best-friend’s grandparents who he’d visit every other weekend and I’d tag along.  Though Frank had said his house had been passed over, there was still some damage to the fencing and the garden.  The roof of his garden shed had been badly burned, most likely from a stray spark from the rubbish bin over his fence which had been set alight.  In comparison to some, he was mostly correct.  They’d been lucky.

Apart from the death of their son.

I helped him bring back his garden’s former glory and aided in keeping it that way.  I went to the supermarket for Wendy.  Sometimes I’d wash the pots, no matter how many times they told me the dishwasher would do just as good a job.  I felt like I was contributing.  They gave me a bed.  Food.  A place to wash and to relax.  I slept, I ate and I bathed.

I didn’t relax.

Tom.  That was all I had.  Tom.  A name and a messy shock of dirty blond hair.  It wasn’t a great deal to begin with, but a beginning was all I needed.

I took my time – after all, I had a lot of that.  Many of the abandoned houses were left to fall down on their own.  The occupiers were too scarred or scared to return to where loved ones had died or raiders had ransacked.  Their perfect lives had been shattered along with the windows.  The house next door to Frank and Wendy’s was just such a house.

As the weeks progressed, and the Cardboard Communities grew and the abandoned homes gradually decomposed, the government decided to alter the laws regarding so-called ‘squatter’s rights’.  It was no longer illegal to enter someone else’s house and take up residence.  If the house was no longer used, you could move in.  You could treat it as your own.  It was seen as a way to re-home the newly homeless and to prevent towns and cities from falling into ruin.

And yet, the Purge was a success.

I moved into number 31.  Frank and Wendy didn’t mind.  They still had me near so could make sure I was ok and I was close enough to make sure they were too.  Number 31 was what both my father and Frank would call a ‘fixer-upper’, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as some in the street.  There had been no fire inside.  Some of the windows were in one piece.  Excrement had been smeared across some of the walls – and this had dried, harden and subsequently smelled worse each day – but I could handle that.  It cleaned.  Broken windows could be, and were, boarded up.

They offered me some of their furniture.  The existing furnishings had been slashed at with knives.  It looked as if someone had tried to cut their name into the sofa but had lost interest and attacked it instead.  I hoped the sofa had satiated the intruder and the owners hadn’t fallen victim to the same treatment.

 I refused, politely.  I had no need of a comfortable seat.  When I could sleep, I used the bed in the front bedroom upstairs, which hadn’t been touched.  When I couldn’t, and this was much more the case, I sat in the middle of the living room, staring out into the night.  Watching.  Waiting.

Hoping Tom might wander by on his way to work, the pub, the cinema.

During my days, when I wasn’t with Frank and Wendy, I prepared.

At first, I wandered aimlessly, hoping to catch a glimpse of him or of them.  I couldn’t quite remember what his two male companions had looked like, but I would recognise the woman.  Apart from the way she dressed, a failed attempt to shave off some years, she’d had a tattoo along her leg.  It was a stem of brightly coloured flowers visible even from my hiding place.  Given what she was wearing that night, I guessed it would be almost permanently on display.

 And Mr. Composure had his hair and his laugh.

Before too long, roads were cleared, cars towed away, bodies removed, the slate wiped clean.  People resumed their daily routines where they could and created new ones where they couldn’t.  We were an adaptable race.  We stumbled, fell and picked ourselves up – usually remembering to avoid whatever had tripped us up in the first place.

I hoped Tom was one of those.  He’d be doing what he always did, whether that was working, dealing drugs or spending his days drinking cans of beer and shouting at his children.

Roaming around seemed, initially, to be the best way.  It was a lottery whether I’d find him or not, so an unsystematic search seemed as good as any.  It wasn’t long before I realised this was fruitless so I changed my tack.  I returned to the area of my old home four days out of the week.  Not always the same days, but randomly, ensuring over the course of a month I’d covered as many areas at different times as I could.  I had no idea who he was or where he lived, but I had to guess he was from somewhere in the vicinity.  Why go out of your way to kill or maim someone when you can happily do it on your doorstep and get away with it?

I thought about asking after him or the girl, but worried my questions would get back to either of them.  I had to bide my time.  Find him but not make it noticeable I was looking.  Not until the time was right.  Not until the next Purge.

The rest of the week was spent, in the main, reading.  I wasn’t interested in science fiction or the latest escapades of the Dark Knight.  I read books on, and practised the techniques of, martial arts.  I read books on serial killers and how they’d evaded capture for so long.  I read DIY manuals and learned how to build, rebuild and modify the innards of a house.  With crime at an all time low, little more than a simmering pot of steam where the pressure had so drastically been released, no-one noticed me take the books I required from the various bookstores in town.  Once I was done with them, I always took them back afterwards, but I had no personal source of income.  I was fed by Frank and Wendy.  I was clothed by shops who had become much more lax in their security.

I wasn’t proud of myself for stealing, but I told myself it was in aid of a good cause.  Me.  I wasn’t a bad person, I was just in need.  I wasn’t actually stealing, I was simply borrowing on a permanent basis.

Anyhow, I didn’t just do it for me.  I called my daily scouting hunts ‘daytrips’ so Frank and Wendy wouldn’t worry about how I spent my days.  I suppose ‘hunt’ is the correct word, too.  I was hunting for him.  I wasn’t exactly a lion or bear, but I was certainly hunting my prey.  On those ‘daytrips’, I’d pass by and through many of the Cardboard Communities.  I saw how the people lived and saw how lucky I was to live in a house which only really had the results of someone defecating and spreading it over the walls.

So I stole for them.  I took them food.  Clothing.  Occasionally, I’d borrow, in my own way, a shirt or jeans from a shop and find they’d not fit.  I didn’t always get chance to check the sizes.  I’d not generally give them directly to people – I’d usually leave them near someone  who looked around the right size.  Other times, if I saw a person looking particularly ragged, I’d try and take something to fit.  They never saw me leave these ‘gifts’.  I made sure of that.  It was part of my preparation.  I wanted to be unseen.  I wanted to be able to walk through, leaving various items – clothing, food and so on – without being noticed.

The month before the next Purge was to begin, when the televisions were full of hype and houses were being fortified, I left what I’d come to feel was my home.  This Purge was going to be better prepared than the last one.  The failings of the alarm and security systems had been resolved.  If you didn’t want to take part, or you wanted to but intended to keep your own house intact, there was more of a chance you might succeed.  I’d helped Frank and Wendy upgrade their home and made a play of doing the same to mine.  I had put in place certain weaknesses which I hoped to make my Mr. Composure expose and take advantage of.

I told them I would be back.  I just wanted to go and clear my head.  It was the Purge.  It was the memories.  They understood.  They felt for me.  I hated lying to them.  I’d done so from the start, telling them my name was Stephen.  It wasn’t, but I didn’t want them to try and trace either me or my dead parents.  It was easier to live a life other than my own.  Stephen’s parents had been killed in a car accident on their way home to prepare for the forthcoming festivities.  They weren’t going to take part.  They’d been shopping.  Mum was going to make a nice Carbonnara.  They didn’t make it home.  It was an accident.  Nothing malicious or violent.  Just a fox in the road, a swerve and a tree.

There was no gang.  There was no tattooed woman.  No Tom.  No laugh.

I moved into the Cardboard Community closest to where I used to live.  ‘Moved in’ isn’t perhaps the right phrase.  I relocated to there.  Ramshackle huts constructed with everything from car doors to broken fence panels were quivering next to each other in more or less straight rows, attempting to resemble streets and avenues.  I found a structure made with pieces of old kitchen units and some fridge doors.  It was fairly solidly built and, miraculously, didn’t let the water in when it rained.

I spent every day looking.  I spent every night searching.  I slept when I couldn’t walk any longer.  I ate when I needed to sleep but couldn’t. 

And then I saw them.  Not Tom, but his friends.  Two days before the Purge, when I was close to feeling I’d never find them, I did.  They were under the flyover by the Telegraph, a large building which housed the local evening newspaper and its offshoots.  The road which went past it had a small car park underneath, usually used by the newspaper’s staff.  At night, it had housed a soup kitchen for the homeless, run by volunteers.  That was before this time last year.  Now it was home to drunks and drug users and, it seemed, three people who I’d been seeking for almost twelve months.

One of the vodka drinking men was missing a leg.  A stump dangled from his right hip as if it couldn’t be bothered to stay but hadn’t quite decided to leave along with the rest of the appendage.  He wore shorts which exposed the end of the leg.  It looked dirty.  Rotten.  I imagined it smelled.  Bad.

His friend had been similarly rewarded by their involvement in the Purge.  He walked with a severe limp and couldn’t seem to move his arms properly.  I was almost disappointed.  They would be no fun.  I doubted they’d last more than a couple of hours this time round.  I’d leave them to someone else.  I’d let another take their lives as trophies.

The woman was different.  Her body was still in one piece.  I could tell as the majority of it was on display with her laid face down, drunk.  People were stepping over her, barely seeing her prone form.  I saw her, though.  I saw the flowers running along her leg.  For some reason I’d expected them to have wilted along with the rest of her.  They weren’t.  They were still bright and fresh, in complete contrast to the woman whose skin they decorated.

I waited.  I was good at that.  Eventually she awoke.  She staggered to her feet, slapped both men for making some lewd comments about what they could or should have done while she’d been unconscious, and staggered off.

I followed.