One - Vanadine

A cool wind ruffled the shadow’s mid length hair as he stared down at the soup of humanity. Four storeys below him the city of Bichester spread away in an urban sprawl. Perched above the lights that illuminated everything with a sickly, yellow hue, he was invisible to all, even if they happened to look up at the bank’s Victorian edifice.

Vanadine watched as large groups passed below him, laughing and yelling, pushing and playing. Due to his exile, Vanadine felt an intense jealousy for these people and their lives, envious of something he could never be a part of. The anger began to descend over him at the unfairness of his life, darkening his thoughts and he moved along the narrow, sandstone ledge, the face dirtied by traffic fumes, with an agility and grace that belied his size.

He leaped across from the bank to another building, this one brick and slithered up an iron drainpipe that probably removed sewage from the toilets within. On the roof, he slipped through the shadows as if he was part of them, unseen and unheard. Five minutes later he had reached an area where the streets below were less populated. Fewer people moved about and the envy for those who were here was far lesser. Addicts and the homeless, dealers and people out to prey on the weak populated this area and Vanadine felt nothing for them apart from pity and disdain.

The scream split the night, shattering the relative silence and reverberating from the buildings to echo back and forth making it difficult to pinpoint. Even so, his hearing was superior enough to follow and track the sound and the dark shadow flowed across rooftops heading for the terrified sound.

Peering down into the trash-strewn alleyway beneath him, Vanadine saw a young woman cornered and trapped by two men who were pushing and taunting her as she tried in vain to escape. Every time she did, one of them would grab part of her, the strap of her bag or sleeve, tearing it as they hauled her back.

“Please!” She cried in a high-pitched, terrified voice.

“Please,” one of the men mimicked her as he yanked at the blouse she wore.

Vanadine could hear the buttons give way as her shirt ripped open.

“Now that’s more like it!” One of the men said in a lust-filled voice. “Let’s take this somewhere a little more private.”

Vanadine watched as the girl managed to reach inside her bag and pull something out. An ear-piercing scream sent violent pain through his head forcing him to slap his hands over his ears to lessen the agony.

One of the men slapped the device from her hand and slammed his boot down hard, silencing it for good. His hand lashed out again, catching the girl across the face and slamming her head to one side as the second man pulled a knife, grabbing her by the back of the neck and dragging her towards an abandoned building through a hole in the fence meant to secure it.

Vanadine stepped off the roof, falling the five storeys from the top and landing in a silent crouch. No one witnessed his passing and if anyone saw anything their minds would have just put it down to headlights casting shadows across their building.

Vanadine’s nose wrinkled as the stench from the alleyway assaulted his senses. Rotting cardboard and food waste mingled with urine and faeces from the rats and their predators combining to make a vile miasma he could barely stand to breathe. A pile of construction waste comprising of rubble, plasterboard and concrete sat on his left and what looked like an engine block lay rusting to his right, a puddle of oily water stained orange beneath it.

Ignoring it all, Vanadine padded forward on silent feet, finding the break in the fence and slipping in undetected. The footprint of an old building greeted him, a large concrete pad surrounded by the ghost of a brick wall where something had been demolished. The work had come to a halt, however, and Vanadine faced a windowless building with three floors. Concrete walls stretched off in two directions and the black maw of a doorway faced him.

Always comfortable with the darkness, Vanadine flowed towards the dark rectangle and entered the building. Darkness wrapped around him like a cloak that he welcomed, becoming one with the shadow, as was his nature. Yet what would have been almost utter darkness to most people was like daylight to Vanadine, his eyes naturally able to perceive light most could not. He strode purposefully and silently through the building, marking what once had been a hospital wing but was now just a hollow shell. The sounds of a struggle and voices drew him on as the pair of men taunted and teased the woman, making her squeal and whimper.

Vanadine stepped down some stairs, the well turning back on itself once before he reached the bottom and headed for the sounds. A sheet of semi-translucent plastic hung in place of a door and he parted it, the material barely making a sound over the men’s voices as he entered and stared at the scene.

The pair had made some kind of nest here, dragging in mattresses and broken, discarded furniture atop which they had placed candles and battery powered lanterns lending the room a warm glow which seemed obscene as this was obviously somewhere people spent their last moments in fear, humiliation and agony. Vanadine took the surroundings in with a casual eye, noting a metal filing cabinet, wooden chest of drawers with one missing and what looked to be cupboards from an old kitchen complete with worktop. The stench of stale alcohol and cigarettes was pierced by the odour of human waste coming from somewhere nearby. The alcohol smell came from the hundreds of whole and shattered bottles that littered the place. Vanadine also saw evidence of heavy drug use, hypodermic needles and syringes had been stabbed into the wooden surface of the chest of drawers to make a heart shape.

Are they living down here? Vanadine wondered as he watched the pair of men taunt the girl.

“What we gonna do first, Hann?” One man asked.

He stood around five and a half feet tall but was probably taller as he was hunched forward, his spine curled from some disease or injury. Greasy black hair shot through with a few greys flopped about his shoulders and neck, framing a dark face that was pockmarked and spotty. A habitual drug user, Vanadine could tell from the stench even at this distance. He wore mismatched shoes and tattered clothing comprising of trousers that might have once been grey, a cardigan with no buttons that fluttered about him as if trying to escape and a shirt that held the memory of the light green it had once been.

The one called Hann was a little better turned out with black jeans a pair of shoes that were dirty but did match and a t-shirt with the logo of a band splashed across it, flaming skulls and zombies bounding across his chest. His hair had been cut tight to his skull, the skin gleaming in places where it had stopped growing completely. His face was smoother than his counterpart’s but his expression was too bright, his eyes too wide and the fixed grin plastered across the slash of a mouth revealed brown, rotting teeth.

“Oh, I think I want a dance, first,” Hann said. “A slow striptease to whet my appetite,” he grinned at the girl who managed to pale even further while backing away.

“Yeah! Yeah,” the first man said. “Dance for us, bitch, you’re nearly naked anyway, take the rest off.”

He started towards the woman who crossed her arms over her bra to hide the fact her shirt hung open, revealing a lot of skin.

“Now, now, Glenn,” Hann said in a mock-serious tone. “There’s no need for intimidation and insults. We’re gentlemen after all and we should be treating our guest with courtesy.”

Glenn looked at Hann for a second before backing off a little, lowering the knife.

“There, that’s better, isn’t it?” Hann asked the girl.

She had been backing up until her back hit one of the pillars that supported the upper floor and halted there, trying to cover herself.

“See, we two,” Hann pointed at himself and Glenn. “Are what you might call connoisseurs of the visual arts and entertainment. It would mean a great deal to us both if you would oblige us with a dance,” he paused. “Unless you’d prefer Glenn here to persuade you,” Hann asked. “He likes to cut things,” he added in a dark voice.

“Fuck you!” The woman screamed.

“Oh, that’s going to come much later, “Hann said, spinning in pale faced shock when Vanadine cleared his throat.