Halfhead

1

There’s blood everywhere.

It sparkles in the artificial light like diamonds scattered onto dark-red velvet. It fills the air with the scent of burning copper and hot rust, tugging at her belly. It soaks through her jumpsuit, making the cheap fabric cling to her gaunt body like a second skin.

It’s wonderful.

She falls to her knees in the filthy toilet cubicle; shuddering in ecstasy. With a trembling hand she reaches forward and touches something that looks like boiled beetroot, but isn’t.

Memories burst across her tattered brain: succulent, delicious memories. The hunt. The kill. The sweet, sweet release. She wants to moan, but no sound comes out…

For a long time she just sits there, surrounded by the fruits of her labour. And then, bit by bit, her mind begins to return. A mind she hasn’t used for over six years. All sharp edges and buzzing noise.

Bees and broken glass.

For the first time since the trial, she understands where she is: this is a toilet. Cheap, municipal tiles encrusted with human filth and coated in a film of blood. Pine disinfectant fighting against the acrid stench of old urine. Slowly she stands, the sticky handful falling from her numb fingers, splattering against the floor.

As she steps out into the low room a cloud of flies startle into flight and dance drunkenly through the boiling air, in toxicated on haemoglobin.

Not bees. Bluebottles. They’re pretty.

She holds out a hand and one lands on a sticky red fingertip. Hairy little legs. Fragile glass wings. Her thumb jabs forwards, trapping the wriggling shiny body. Holding it there. It buzzes and wriggles. A tiny life.

And then, slowly, she squeezes till it pops. A little explosion of yellow. A tiny death.

Broken bluebottles and glass.

There’s a mirror mounted on the wall above the sinks. It’s cracked, layered with graffiti. Mimicking the room’s shabby contents: the dirty walls; the streaks of arterial red; the flies; and the thing in the bloodstained orange and black jumpsuit, staring right back…

Broken.

Suddenly everything is still. Even the bluebottles settle, not daring to spoil the moment.

Tears blur her eyes as she finally understands what she has become. The face in the mirror is not the face of a human being, it’s the face of an animal. A killer. A halfhead. No hair, no mind and no lower jaw.

She can’t even scream.