Sven’s guide to…

Well, no sooner did I admit defeat on DAVID & FELICIA than my writing group decided (by consensus, obviously: it’s not an autonomous being after all) that the most useful homework would be to bring in the plan of your ongoing project and have a communal ass-kicking.  Fortunately, having hit rock bottom the only way is up and I’ve already done four pages of refined synopsis, character outline and chapter planning.  Now I’ve got three weeks in Australia to carry on thinking and writing and nothing to think about in the meantime but where the next drink is coming from.  Life is good.  For now though, last week’s homework: 500 words beginning with “They didn’t even care..”.  Prep yourself for some pretty bleak shit.

*****

They didn’t even care when they shot my mother.   They were glad of the peace for a moment, until the woman next to her began screaming and then the whole truck started up again.  She was obviously in shock - my mother’s brains and blood were sprayed across the front of her blouse - and she had to let it out.  They shot her too, and then they started yelling at us to be quiet; to shut the fuck up or be shut up.  Pretty soon you couldn’t hear the women weeping over the sound of the engine as we made our way out of London.
I don’t remember feeling anything on that truck; nothing.   When they made us throw the bodies off on Streatham Hill I just did it.  I remember her weight, familiar and yet so strange, and how it took three of us to drag her over the tailgate until she fell awkwardly into the gutter.  And then we were back on the truck and driving away and she was lying in the street and her eye was watching us go.
It was evening when we finally arrived at the camp.  They had built it in a hurry on an old golf club after Croydon had been blown to hell.  The gun-turrets were propped behind bunkers filled with wet sand the same colour as the sky.  The blood had dried and blackened on my hands despite the weather, but under my feet it was mingling with the rain and running off the back of the truck into the street, running away.  A distant echo of gunfire chased after it and on the overgrown fairway the grey grass waved us onwards.
The truck stopped in front of a makeshift building that had been thrown up with the rest of the camp and a soldier barked orders and looked right through us.  One woman was shouting about something but he didn’t see her until she touched him.  His expression changed and his blank face was instantly full of rage.
“Get your hands off me” he yelled, and he cracked her jaw with his gun.  She fell to the floor, his eyes glazed over and his face switched off.  His mind was elsewhere, nowhere, anywhere but here.  We were ushered indoors through a maze of fencing towards a row of soldiers demanding names.
“Sophie Moreau” I said, when I finally reached him.
“French” he spat into the screen as he typed it in.
“I’m British” I implored, mustering the energy to beg from somewhere.
“Papers” he demanded.  In my pocket, the soggy arrest notice we had been given on the truck was gently disintegrating.  I took it out and handed it to him.  The barcode was still readable.
“Says here your mother’s a frog.” he said, without looking up from the screen.  “Is she?”
“She’s dead.”
“Hmmm.” He took my wrist and pulled my arm toward him while he reached for a gun with his other hand.  I tried to pull away as he pressed it onto my forearm and pulled the trigger.  I winced as it broke my skin, but he held my arm until a small beep indicated he was finished.
“You’re done” he said.  Under my skin I could feel the small tag, and as I stepped through the gates the lights blinked on and off.  There was no way out now.