Down Among the Dead Men by Ed Chatterton

glances at the table.
    'Oh, that. Don't panic, Nicky. They're just props. We're friends, aren't we? More than friends.'
    Abruptly he hands Nicky a bucket and tells him to clean himself up. 'You stink.'
    'You're going to kill me,' says Nicky. He hadn't planned to say anything but it just comes out. The monster can't do all this and let him survive. There's just no way back from this. Nicky tries to keep his voice steady but he can't. If he lets himself think of his mother he knows he'll collapse so he digs his fingernails hard into his palms.
    'Who knows? Now get yourself clean. I can hardly breathe.'
    'Why are you doing this? I liked you. Those things we did . . . I won't tell.'
    'Shh, quiet, Nicky. Get yourself clean.' The monster tries to make his voice soothing but it isn't working. There's a nervy energy emanating from the monster. Unpredictable.
    Nicky does his best to scrape the filth from his body, hardly daring to take his eyes from the plastic-covered table holding the tools. When all the water is gone he stands, his knees bent, darting pain shooting up his legs. The monster looks at him without expression.
    'All done?'
    Nicky nods.
    His captor produces a plastic loop from the pocket of his jacket and cinches it tight around Nicky's wrists, held out in front of him. Nicky drops his hands to his groin, covering himself as best he can. The gut-wrenching terror is starting to return.
    'What's happening? What are you going to do? Please don't do this.'
    Without warning, his expression unchanged, the monster slaps him hard across the face and Nicky falls to the floor before being dragged upright by his hair. He starts to sob and that makes the monster angry.
    'Fucking shut it, you fucking little cunt bastard!' Hissing, the monster's face distorts with fury and Nicky can feel the spittlehitting his face. 'Keep it fucking closed, you fucking got that? Fucking shut it!'
    The monster stands back, breathing heavily through his nose. He's tall, the monster, and in the torchlight coming up from the floor, his bloated shadow dancing across the curved brick ceiling, he is a subterranean nightmare, a creature from the depths, the devil himself. Nicky finds it hard to look at the creature's eyes. It's like looking into hell. 'You don't fucking understand. I'm under a lot of fucking pressure.'
    The monster's head bobs from side to side, half-nodding, half-shaking, as if conducting an inner dialogue. He keeps clenching and unclenching his fingers.
    Then, like a storm clearing, he is calm again. He takes out a bottle of water from a backpack and hands it to Nicky. The boy guzzles it and the monster stops him.
    'Slower. You'll make yourself ill.' He bends to the backpack and takes out a plastic-wrapped sandwich. Marks & Spencer, chicken salad. He gives it to Nicky and watches him eat.
    'The things I've done,' he says quietly as Nicky sits on the box chewing. His tone is one of bewilderment.
    Nicky stands there, waiting. He feels like he's going to be sick and his face hurts from the blow. Curiously, the sudden anger from the creature in front of him makes him feel better. At some gut level, Nicky knows that the violent reaction is because the monster doesn't know what to do with him.
    It's something to hold on to.

Nineteen
    Frank follows the blood trail leading from the main bedroom and along the landing towards the bathroom filled with white-suited techs.
    The house is decorated in that way that Frank always thinks of as being beyond him no matter what the money. It's not that these people are rich, or at least not
rich
rich. It's more that they just seem to have the right stuff. The soft lighting, the sagging but expensive sofas, pictures on the wall that look like they mean something.
    He's seen a piano downstairs. The kids round here have piano lessons. Or they can play the piano. Either way, it's not something that was common in the homes he was brought up in. He can remember getting a Muppet trumpet one Christmas and that was