Behind the Skin

Chapter 4 Breaking news

More happenings taking place.

On his walk to school in the morning, Bratis searches online for more information on yesterdays news. There’s one very vague article on the internet and nothing else. The source says it was released in Kenya last month. He puts his phone back in his pocket but the matter remains at the front of his mind the whole day.

The repair man had promised to come around in a week’s time. Apparently, even with the general state of his shop the people of Sheepshead Bay required his services like an engine requires feul.

But that means the television remains off and Anastasia finds other things to do to keep herself occupied. Bratis and Ren come back from school to find her emptying out the overhead cabinets in the kitchen. She tells Ren to freshen up and give her a hand but only asks Bratis if he’s hungry.

“No”, he says flatly, clutching the straps of his bagpack as he thinks about what this might mean. The woman was in her element, cleaning like her life depended on it. It was not a new thing per se but since the television was out, she had more than enough time on her hands to turn it into a spring cleaning episode. Which would mean that she would throw away all the old and unkept items in the house.

Bratis left the mother and son duo to their own devices and trudged up the stairs to his room.

He spent a few minutes changing out of his clothes and putting them in the laundry he would take down later. He went through his closet, navigating through black upon grey upon more black clothes and settling on a comfortable charcoal hoodie. He slipped it over his head, covering up his pale and lithe body. He took a moment to look around his room. The unmade bed in the corner by the wall, the dresser next to the window and his rickety old cupboard. There was a lamp on the dresser along with two of the only three notebooks he owned and that was about it. He wondered what his Step-mother would do if she got her hands on this room and decided not to let that be an option.

He picked up his dirty laundry and retreated downstairs.

He saw Anastasia taking a duster to his father’s old desk and had to stop. He took deep breaths, grip painfully tight around the handle of the basket as he tried his best not to hurl it on her there and then.

“Oh”, said Anastasia when he noticed his presence. She turned to him with a smile. “How was school?”

The evident glare that Bratis gave her could not be mistaken but it seemed the woman was blind for she didn’t bat an eye. “I’m making pasta for dinner”, she said off-handedly, continuing to dust the furniture as if Bratis wasn’t plotting her death in his mind right then.

She moved to the other side and Bratis noted with horror that all of his Father’s novels were missing from their spot.

“You know…”, Anastasia started to say but Bratis didn’t wait to hear anything she had to tell him. He turned around quickly and stormed off as fast that he could march, afraid that if he stayed a second longer, he would really kill someone in this house.

He took the detergent and a brush and set about washing his clothes. Anastasia had always offered to do it for him, saying something like how she married his father so it’s his right that she should take care of him. Bratis wondered then how she would react if he told her that the only way she could take care of him was by hanging herself.

He switched his phone to the radio station while he worked and by the time he was hanging the clothes up to dry there was more news on the serial killer.from yesterday. More victims have been recorded, bodies showing up in concerning numbers over a short period of time. The departments of health, law and order and foreign affairs are having the busiest times of their lives, which is really saying something. The descriptions of the manner of death is related quite gruesomely by the radio host (creation point)

The authorities claim that the hits taking place are ordered by the padre’s cult.

Bratis pauses at that, hands stilling in the action of wringing as his blood runs cold at the implications of that one sentence.

He only ever heard it being called as the “Padre Organization”.

By his dad.

Bratis srings up the last of the laundered clothes and sits down on the dried grass with his phone in his hands.

The Padre Organization were the people who ran the church St. Mary’s Tabernacle. The head of the organization is one lady by the name of Mrs.Westwood, and Bratis knows her personally. His own father had been a prominent member of the organization before he quit. Bratis used to visit the church often when he was a child. He would follow his father around and show up for every sermon. Still did even after the death of his mother. Persisted even when Anastasia came home one day on his fathers left arm, clad in a white dress and a veil. Stopped entirely when Ren came into the world.

Stopped believing in God.

The radio crackles as he raises the volume.

“The intelligence agencies have ruled out the threat of a possible serial killer, considering that the amount of bodies showing up and the rapid speed at which the attacks are taking place. It is impossible for one person to have done all these things at the same time. The extent of the injuries, the wounds inflicted on the victims are not possible to be achieved in a hit and run of any kind. Doctors suspect poisoning but autopsy reports have revealed a negative on the matter”

The reporter went on talking about the places affected, listing under ten countries and trying to tie them together. It went on like that for a few days. The number of countries affected increased in number by the day and almost every news channel was swarmed with reports and interviews of researchers and family’s whose kin was affected.

Since it was confirmed that no Jack the Ripper wannabe was on the loose, people went about their lives as usual.

It was dangerous, sure. But so was the black death. It was a point of life on earth that humans had already accepted. If there was another plague coming, then so be it.

It was high time for the apocalypse to be upon us.

It was late in the night when Bratis tuned into the radio for perhaps the twelfth time in four days. It was past midnight but he had soon learned that after twelve was the time they broadcasted the more adult side of the news.

“…twenty one year old female. Time of death approximately five hours eight minutes in the pm. The deceased was practicing her ballet routine when she slipped and sustained injuries from the fall. She started bleeding from the scrape on her elbow and witnesses testified to the gruesome manner of her death. We were reluctant in disclosing the process but the family has come forward and reached a mutual understanding to broadcast the description of the tragedy.

The deceased started bleeding from the cut on her elbow having been inflicted by her fall. Other dancers present in the room rushed to her aid and noticed another wound on her shoulder which seemed to have magically appeared. The victim suddenly went very stiff, looking at a distant place, as described by our source, and spasmed violently, eyes rolling to the back of her head. The hole on her shoulder enlarged and more, similar wounds started to appear all over her body. They bled profusely and paramedics could not get the flow to stop. She was immediately taken to the hospital, where experts did their best to save her life, but in vain. The blood refused to clot and as retold by the head of E.R., she bled like a lamb for slaughter”, the reporter paused for effect. “It is most curious to find after all this time that every death pertaining to this case perhaps took place in the same manner. However, this is the first incident that happened in front of a public so we can’t be too sure. Experts have not ruled out the possibility of some unknown bacteria or virus contaminating our water or the air we breathe. It is impossible to say where this will lead us, but what we’re sure about is that nobody should have to die this way.

Photographs taken of the lady’s corpse have not been deemed appropriate for the public eye, but what we can tell you is that it’s not pretty. And by that, I mean that no death ever is, but trust me on this: you do not want to look”

The report continues, telling the listeners to tune in for more updates so they can be the first to know and all the media catchphrases that should’ve gone extinct by now.

It’s simple: nobody cares.