Dancing Towards the Blade and Other Stories Read Free Page A

the same direction as his friend. Drumming again now, and singing, heading for the marketplace. All of them, all the ghost-boys, moving towards the moment when they would die and come back to life.
    ‘Shut up!’ Vincent shouted.
    After a moment or two, the skinny one and the one with the shaved head stopped making their monkey noises, but only after a half-glance in their direction from the one in the cap.
    ‘Turn your pockets out,’ he said.
    Vincent’s hands were pressed hard against his legs to keep them still. He slowly brought each of them up to his pockets, slipped them inside.
    ‘Maybe we’ll let you pay to go home. Let me see what you’ve got.’
    Vincent’s left hand came out empty. His right emerged clutching the change from his train ticket. He opened his hand and the one in the cap leaned forward to take a look.
    ‘Fuck that, mate. Where’s the notes?’
    Vincent shook his head. ‘This is all I’ve got.’
    ‘You’re a liar. Where’s your wallet?’
    Vincent said nothing. He closed his hand around the coins and thrust his fist back into his trouser pocket.
    The one in the cap took a step towards him. He was no more than a couple of feet away. ‘Don’t piss me about. I don’t like it, yeah?’
    He could easily turn and go round…
    ‘Where’s his phone?’ the skinny one said.
    ‘Get his fucking phone, man. They always have wicked phones.’
    The one in the cap held out his hand. ‘Let’s have it.’
    It suddenly seemed to Vincent that the phone might be the way out of it, his way past them. Handing it over, giving them something and then trying to get past was probably a good idea.
    The mobile was snatched from his grasp the second he’d produced it. The one in the cap turned and swaggered back towards his friends. They cheered as he held it up for them to look at.
    The three gathered around to examine the booty and Vincent saw a gap open up between the far right bollard and the wall. He thought about making a run for it. If he could stay ahead of them for just a minute, half a minute maybe, he would be virtually home. He reckoned he could outrun the two bigger ones anyway. Perhaps his mother or father, one of his brothers might see him coming.
    He took a tentative step forward.
    The one in the cap wheeled round suddenly, clutching the phone. ‘Piece of cheap shit.’ His arm snapped back, then forward and Vincent watched the phone explode against the wall, shattering into pieces of multi-coloured plastic.
    The crack of the phone against the bricks changed something.
    By the time Vincent looked again the gap had been filled. The three stood square on to him, their bodies stiff with energy despite their efforts to appear relaxed.
    The space between them all was suddenly charged.
    Vincent had no idea how he looked to them, what his face said about how he felt at that moment. He looked at their faces and saw hatred and excitement and expectation. He also saw fear.
    ‘Last chance,’ the one in the cap said.
    The boy was stunned by the size of the crowd, though it was nothing unusual. He could remember, when he’d been one of the onlookers himself as a child, thinking that there couldn’t possibly be this many people in the whole world. Today, as at the same moment every year, those that could not get a clear view were standing on tables and other makeshift platforms. They were perched on roofs and clustered together in the treetops.
    He and his age-mates were paraded together, one final time, carried aloft like kings. His eyes locked for a few seconds with a friend as they passed each other.
    Their Adam’s apples were like wild things in their throats.
    While the boy moved on shoulders above the teeming mass of bodies, the dancing and the drumming grew more frenzied. Exhausted, he summoned the strength to sing one final time, while below him the basket was passed around and each relative given a last chance to hand over more money or pledge another gift.
    Now, it was only the fizzing in