Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror

Praise for Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror

For decades, Ellen Datlow has set the bar. One of the most influential editors in the history of genre fiction, the gold standard of anthologists, and the ultimate tastemaker for horror stories. Datlow’s career and reputation are entirely unique—there’s only one Ellen.

—Christopher Golden, author of Ararat

"Ellen Datlow has long ago earned her place as the premier anthologist of fantasy and horror. Appearing in one of her unique volumes is recognized as a significant honor, and Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror is no different."

—Joe R. Lansdale, author of In the Mad Mountains

"Ellen Datlow has a supernatural talent for assembling fantastic stories into must-read anthologies, and Fears is another extraordinary example of that talent. There are no ghosts here, no monsters. Just some of the most terrifying people you’re likely to meet. Fears is filled with deeply unsettling stories of psychological horror that will continue to haunt you long after the book is closed."

—Josh Rountree, author of The Legend of Charlie Fish

Ellen Datlow has expertly gathered stories that surprise by enticing us down one path and then morph, unexpectedly, into a deeper level of anxiety and dread. Here we discover the most creative creatures of terror are human beings, who wear masks of normality to hide monstrous desires and actions. Each author skillfully finds different ways to lead us one step deeper into their flavor of mental, emotional, psychological horror.

—Linda D. Addison, author of How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend

"Ellen Datlow, literature's mistress of darkness, has an unflinching eye for the glorious and the grotesque and an unerring ear for the voices that define and illuminate our genre. With Fears, the latest addition to her already remarkable bibliography, she proves yet again that she is one of the premier anthologists of her—or any other—generation."

—Pete Atkins, author of Hellraiser: Bloodline

Praise for Body Shocks

★ Hugo Award—winning editor Datlow (Edited By) brings together twenty-nine spine-tingling tales of body horror to terrify even the most seasoned horror reader. These visceral works take myriad approaches to the genre, but all revel in the grotesque possibilities of the human body. ‘The Old Women Who Were Skinned’ by Carmen Maria Machado is an eerie, cautionary fable about the pitfalls of vanity. Terry Dowling’s stomach-churning ‘Toother’ follows the grim exploits of a serial killer who collects the teeth of his victims. The woman in Kirstyn McDermott’s ‘Painlessness’ feels no pain when injured and makes her living giving men an outlet for their violent fantasies. In ‘The Lake’ by Tananarive Due, a woman metamorphoses into a predatory sea creature. A confectioner transforms his fiancée’s ghost into delectable treats enjoyed by the Parisian elite in Lisa L. Hannett’s grossly gluttonous and deliciously weird ‘Sweet Subtleties.’ Cassandra Khaw’s intense ‘The Truth That Lies Under Skin and Meat’ follows a werewolf who takes distinct pleasure in devouring her victims, much to the dismay of her handler. And Simon Bestwick’s bizarre alternate history ‘Welcome to Mengele’s’ takes readers into a Nazi doctor’s movie theater where patrons watch their sickest fantasies play out on screen. These wholly original and truly chilling tales are not for the faint of heart.

—Publishers Weekly

Ellen Datlow is the undisputed queen of horror anthologies, and with Body Shocks her crown remains untarnished.

—David J. Schow, author of Suite 13

So vivid and intense as to result as a slap in the reader’s face.

—Hellnotes

"Ellen Datlow doesn’t just have her thumb on the pulse of horror, she is the pulse of horror."

—Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians

Ellen Datlow is the empress of the horror anthology—enviably well-read, eagle-eyed for talent, eager for originality, she’s one of the glories of the field. Nobody who loves horror should lack any of her books. They’re a crucial shelf all by themselves, and something of a history of modern horror.

—Ramsey Campbell, author of The Searching Dead

To produce an excellent horror anthology that will endure, it takes an editor with the knowledge of the history of horror and a genuine feel for the delightfully grisly genre. It is a high bar to obtain. Only the best reach it and produce a book that is gilt-edged. Ellen Datlow’s books are the gold standard.

—Del Howison, author of The Survival of Margaret Thomas

There are certain brand names that imply undeniable quality, and when I see Ellen Datlow as editor on an anthology, my first thought is always, That’s a must-buy. She’s such a knowledgeable editor, with a sharp eye and a long-standing love of the genre that leaps from every page.

—Tim Lebbon, author of The Silence

Also edited by Ellen Datlow

A Whisper of Blood

A Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales (with Terri Windling)

After (with Terri Windling)

Alien Sex

Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales

Black Heart, Ivory Bones (with Terri Windling)

Black Swan, White Raven (with Terri Windling)

Black Thorn, White Rose (with Terri Windling)

Blood Is Not Enough: 17 Stories of Vampirism

Blood and Other Cravings

Body Shocks: Extreme Tales of Body Horror

Children of Lovecraft

Christmas and Other Horrors

Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror

Digital Domains: A Decade of Science Fiction & Fantasy

Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories

Edited By

Fearful Symmetries

Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles

Haunted Legends (with Nick Mamatas)

Haunted Nights (with Lisa Morton)

Hauntings

Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

Lethal Kisses

Little Deaths

Lovecraft Unbound

Lovecraft’s Monsters

Mad Hatters and March Hares

Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy

Nebula Awards Showcase 2009

Nightmare Carnival

Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror

Off Limits: Tales of Alien Sex

Omni Best Science Fiction: Volumes One through Three

The Omni Books of Science Fiction: Volumes One through Seven

Omni Visions One and Two

Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells (with Terri Windling)

Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (with Terri Windling)

Salon Fantastique: Fifteen Original Tales of Fantasy (with Terri Windling)

Screams from the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous

Silver Birch, Blood Moon (with Terri Windling)

Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers (with Terri Windling)

Snow White, Blood Red (with Terri Windling)

Supernatural Noir

Swan Sister (with Terri Windling)

Tails of Wonder and Imagination: Cat Stories

Teeth: Vampire Tales (with Terri Windling)

Telling Tales: The Clarion West 30th Anniversary Anthology

The Beastly Bride: And Other Tales of the Animal People (with Terri Windling)

The Best Horror of the Year: Volumes One through Sixteen

The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales (with Terri Windling)

The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen

The Dark: New Ghost Stories

The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea

The Doll Collection

The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm

The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest (with Terri Windling)

The Monstrous

Troll’s-Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales (with Terri Windling)

Twists of the Tale

Vanishing Acts

When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson

The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (with Terri Windling, and with Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link) Volumes One through Twenty-one

A Note from the Publisher About Piracy

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Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror

Copyright © 2024 by Ellen Datlow

This is a work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the author and the publisher.

Introduction copyright © 2024 by Ellen Datlow

Cover art Sheldon Screamer copyright ©2014 by Brian Smith

Interior and cover design by Elizabeth Story

Tachyon Publications LLC

1459 18th Street #139

San Francisco, CA 94107

415.285.5615

www.tachyonpublications.com

[email protected]

Series editor: Jacob Weisman

Project editor: Jaymee Goh

Print ISBN: 978-1-61696-422-1

Digital ISBN: 978-1-61696-423-8

Printed in the United States by Versa Press, Inc.

First Edition: 2024

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Bait copyright © 2022 by Simon Bestwick. First published in The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories edited by Maxim Jakubowski, 2022 Mango Media. Reprinted with permission of the author.

The Pelt copyright © 2022 by Annie Neugebauer. First published in The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors, edited by edited by Doug Murano, 2022 Bad Hand Books. Reprinted with permission of the author.

A Sunny Disposition copyright © 2022 by Josh Malerman. First published in Human Monsters edited by Sadie Hartmann and Ashley Saywers, 2022 Dark Matter Ink. Reprinted with permission of the author and his agent, Nelson Literary Agency.

The Donner Party copyright © 2018 by Dale Bailey. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February 2018. Reprinted with permission of the author.

White Noise in a White Room copyright © 2020 by Steve Duffy. First published in Weird Horror, October 2020. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Singing My Sister Down copyright © 2004 by Margo Lanagan. First published in Black Juice, 2004 Allen & Unwin Australia. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Back Seat copyright © 2017 by Bracken MacLeod. First published in Lost Highways: Dark Fictions from the Road edited by D. Alexander Ward, 2018 Crystal Lake Publishing. Reprinted with permission of the author.

England and Nowhere copyright © 2007 by Tim Nickels. First published in Zencore!, edited by D. F. Lewis, 2007 Megazanthus Press. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Endless Summer copyright © 2000 by Stewart O’Nan. First published in Century, number 6, spring 2000. Reprinted with permission of the author.

My Mother’s Ghosts copyright © 2020 by Priya Sharma. First published in Great British Horror 4: Dark and Stormy Nights edited by Steve J. Shaw, 2020 Black Shuck Books. Reprinted with permission of the author.

The Wink and the Gun copyright © 2021 by John Patrick Higgins. First published in The Black Dreams: Strange Stories from Northern Ireland, edited by Reggie Chamberlain-King, 2021 The Black Staff Press. Reprinted with permission of the author.

One of These Nights copyright © 2019 by Livia Llewellyn. First published in Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, 2019 Akashic Press. Reprinted with permission of the author.

LD50 copyright © 2013 by Laird Barron. First published on Laird Barron’s Weaponized blog, 2013. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Cavity copyright © 2019 by Theresa DeLucci. First published on Strange Horizons, July 8, 2019. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Souvenirs copyright © 2022 by Sharon Gosling. First published in Close to Midnight: New Horror Short Stories, edited by Mark Morris, 2022 Flame Tree Press. Reprinted with permission of the author.

The Wrong Shark copyright © 2022 by Ray Cluley. First published in All That’s Lost, 2022 Black Shuck Books. Reprinted with permission of the author.

21 Brooklands: next to Old Western, opposite the burnt out Red Lion copyright © 2013 by Carole Johnstone. First published in For the Night is Dark, edited by Ross Warren, 2013 Crystal Lake Publishing. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Unkindly Girls copyright © 2020 by Hailey Piper. First published in Worst Laid Plans: An Anthology of Vacation Horror, edited by Samantha Kolesnik, 2020, Grindhouse Press. Reprinted with permission of the author.

A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts copyright © 1964 by Charles Birkin. First published in Shafts of Fear, edited by Dennis Wheatley, 1964 Arrow Books. Reprinted with permission of the author’s estate.

Teeth copyright © 2005 by Stephen Graham Jones. First published in Brutarian 44, spring 2005. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Ellen Datlow

"Bait" by Simon Bestwick

"The Pelt" by Annie Neugebauer

"A Sunny Disposition" by Josh Malerman

"The Donner Party" by Dale Bailey

"White Noise in a White Room" by Steve Duffy

"Singing My Sister Down" by Margo Lanagan

"Back Seat" by Bracken MacLeod

"England and Nowhere" by Tim Nickels

"Endless Summer" by Stewart O’Nan

"My Mother’s Ghosts" by Priya Sharma

"The Wink and the Gun" by John Patrick Higgins

"One of These Nights" by Livia Llewellyn

"LD50" by Laird Barron

"Cavity" by Theresa DeLucci

"Souvenirs" by Sharon Gosling

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates

"The Wrong Shark" by Ray Cluley

"21 Brooklands: next to Old Western, opposite the burnt out Red Lion" by Carole Johnstone

"Unkindly Girls" by Hailey Piper

"A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" by Charles Birkin

"Teeth" by Stephen Graham Jones

About the Contributors

About Ellen Datlow

Introduction

by Ellen Datlow

Fears, as its subtitle expresses, is an anthology of stories focused on psychological horror. There might be a slight supernatural aspect to a few of the included works, but if it does exist it is not the main thrust of the story.

Some misguided connoisseurs of horror refuse to accept a story without supernatural elements as horror. This to me is short-sighted. The horror umbrella is large enough to encompass all sorts of sub-genres. Take everything from science fictional horror such as John W. Campbell’s great novella Who Goes There? And George Langelaan’s The Fly, and Jack Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The conte cruel is generally considered a tale of gruesome horror that ends in a cruel twist of fate. Charles Birkin (with a story included herein), Edgar Allan Poe, and Roald Dahl are important practitioners of this usually not supernatural type of fiction. A subset of crime fiction-the deeply disturbed serial killers such as Hannibal Lector in Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs and Gretchen Lowell, the viciously sadistic killer of Chelsea Cain’s Heartsick series—creates the same feeling in me as the best supernatural horror does—dread.

For me, it comes down to how the material makes me feel as I read it.

So where does fear come in? Well, as Bracken MacLeod has said: I think of fear as the precursor to terror--an anticipation of emergent or imminent harm that can start small like an unseen virus that eventually spreads until it’s taken over. Where terror, being the reaction to violence (let’s say) witnessed or experienced in the present moment, always seems large. I think the two (along with horror and disgust) are related. Fear transforms into terror. Terror leaves us with lingering fear. But one’s germinating while the other is cascading.

They were all written between 1964 and 2022. They’re about serial killers, hunters of murderers and the blowback this can cause in the hunter, about cruel traditions, horrific appetites, toxic friendships, dysfunctional intimate relationships, revenge for real and imagined slights. Hopefully, they will instill a frisson of fear in the reader.

*The ruminations by Bracken MacLeod came about from a conversation he and I had during Storyfest 2022.

Bait

Simon Bestwick

Late night, in a bar where you couldn’t smoke anymore but where the memory of stale tobacco hung in the air like a ghost. I was nursing a double Black Bush against the evil hour of having to go out into the cold, when the door flapped open and in she came, chased by a flurry of snow and a gust of bitter wind.

She barely looked old enough to drink but the barmaid didn’t bother her for details like ID; Mulligan’s wasn’t that sort of bar, or the kind that can afford to turn away paying custom. So she served the girl—a pale slip of a thing, flower-pretty and flower-fragile to look at, dark-haired and white-faced—a beer, then went back to polishing glasses while the girl sat at a table and drank.

With its old worn carpets, padded bench seats, and faded flock wallpaper, Mulligan’s isn’t the kind of bar that pretty, innocent-looking girls like this one came into either, as a rule, and while my normal tendency’s to mind my own business, I found myself keeping an eye on her as I nursed my drink. Some of it might have been out of a vestigial sense of chivalry or paternal instinct, but—at least to start with—it was probably the kind of fascination that draws the eye to a car wreck as it happens.

There were three or four other customers in the bar, none of whom I knew by name and a couple of whom I knew by sight; I’d never exchanged more than a dozen words with any of them. Because—all together now—Mulligan’s isn’t that kind of place. You don’t go there to socialise or get lucky, except maybe on the rare occasions one of the working girls from Becker’s Lane comes in to warm her bones between customers. You go there to drink and either brood on, or temporarily blot out, any recollection of the circumstances that had made you the kind of person who spent their nights drinking at Mulligan’s.

That, and occasionally you’d put something on the jukebox. They had a good selection—Pink Floyd, Sisters of Mercy, Leonard Cohen—along with the usual crowd-pleasers. Just then it was playing Shine On You Crazy Diamond, all thirteen or fourteen minutes of it. That’s what’s known as value for money. The song was still on the intro, where the opening G-Minor chord’s giving way to Wright’s low, mournful Minimoog solo but Gilmour hasn’t come into on the guitar yet, all of which suited the mood of painless melancholy I’d been sinking into throughout the night.

And then the prick in the corner had to spoil it all.

He didn’t do anything—not there, not then—but I’d seen him in Mulligan’s a couple of times before. He wasn’t big, but he was wiry, with scrubby gingery hair and an equally scrubby ginger beard. There was an eerie stillness about him: I’d never seen him move except to drink. The rest of the time he’d just sit, staring blankly ahead, until it was time to get another vodka and Coke or to leave.

Except this one time; the last time there’d been a pretty woman in the bar at the same time as him. Ginger’s head had swivelled ’round like part of a machine, and he’d hunched forward, staring at her. It was the only time I’d ever seen anything resembling emotion on his face. It had looked like hunger. When the girl had gone out—maybe because his scrutiny had started to disturb her—Ginger’d sat in silence for a count of five, then got up and followed her out, leaving his drink half-finished on the table. I hadn’t gone after them, and I’d purposely avoided reading the papers or looking at the news for several days afterwards. I’d done my best to screen out the bar gossip, which I normally liked to eavesdrop on. But I didn’t want to know. I knew enough. And while not much bothers me these days, that did.

And so I wasn’t surprised to see Ginger looking at the girl, the same way he had the other one. Nor was I at all surprised when, after the girl finished her beer—tapping the base of the bottle to coax the last few suds into her mouth—got up and went out, Ginger sat still for a mental count of five before getting up and going out too. The only surprise was the one I gave myself, when I knocked back the last of the Black Bush and went across the bar, pulling my parka on as I went.

I had no real idea what I was going to do beyond not letting history repeat itself, and I had even less of a clue once I made it out onto Cairn Street, because there was no one in sight—not the girl, and not Ginger. A car swished by, wheels churning at the slush on the tarmac and headlights trapping swirls of snow, but the only person in it was an old man with white hair and thick moustache.

I spun first one way and then the other, but all I saw was the light shining on wet empty pavement and grey slush. Cairn Street cuts a pretty straight line through downtown, linking two other main roads, and there’s little or nothing branching off.

Other, I remembered then, than the side-alleys that connect it to China Row, a narrow cobbled back-street that runs behind the buildings on this side of the road, where the various businesses put out their garbage. One of those side-alleys was three or four yards ahead, and now I could see what’d happened very clearly, projected onto the screen on the back of my skull: Ginger coming out of Mulligan’s, seeing the girl, and then accelerating after her with a cat’s speed and silence.

I went towards the alley, converting my normal shuffle into something like a shambling trot, and I was almost there when I heard the scream.

I did the only thing I could think of and blundered down the alley onto the backstreet with a bellow. Get off her you bastard were, I think, my exact words. Definitely something along those lines, anyway. Something that would have immediately made clear why I was there; I know that much, because I left China Row alive.

I caught a glimpsed blur of motion darting into the shadows, but my main focus was the small thin body lying on the ground and the blood shining black around it in the reflected light pollution from the snowclouds above. Fuck, I said, and then Fuck, once again. I dropped into a crouch by the body, although I could already guess from its stillness and the amount of blood that there wasn’t much point. Maybe I was just glad of the excuse not to try and chase Ginger and risk serious injury even if I caught the bastard.

I genuinely thought the body was her, though—I’ll blame the dim light and the influence of several Black Bushes for that—until I flipped it over and saw who it really was.

Ginger was actually still alive, if only just. His eyes were staring up at the falling snow and his lips were twitching. If I had to guess, I think he was trying to say something along the lines of What just happened?

A switchblade lay in the snow beside him, but there was no blood on the blade: his weapon, not hers, so I guessed I’d read his intentions correctly. There was a stab wound in his throat, but it wasn’t a cut. I felt a little sick when I realised what she’d done: her knife had both a cutting edge and a sharp point, and she’d used the point to puncture his voicebox, so that after the initial scream all he’d been able to manage were the thin whistling sounds I finally registered he was making.

As for the rest of the wounds: he’d been cut up badly, and in what could only have been seconds, given the time it’d taken me to get down the alley. But I could see, too, that it hadn’t been a frenzied act; madness might or might not have been involved, but a method of some kind certainly had been. One of the wounds, for instance, ran down his right arm from the shoulder to the elbow, slicing through coat, clothing, and muscle like warmed-up butter. Bone gleamed white through the red. That would’ve been when he’d screamed, at a guess: when she’d turned on him and turned the tables. Then the stab to the throat, silencing him. And then, the rest of the damage.

The crotch of his jeans was a sodden, ragged hole, and the source of most of the blood, although he was leaking from a couple of torso wounds too. When I looked across the alley, I could see something else lying wet and steaming in the snow. A chunk of blood-soaked denim, and something else. It was too shadowy to see it in any more detail, thankfully, but lying a few inches from it was something small and egg-shaped, and I quickly looked away.

A very sharp blade, indeed. She’d grabbed his groin and sliced—quickly and surely, presumably without injuring herself—then stabbed him and run. If I hadn’t turned up, I suspected she’d have taken a lot more time and been considerably more inventive. What she’d done to Ginger hadn’t been about self-defence. It had been punishment.

Boots clicked on the cobbles, down in the shadows she’d run into. I could hear the sound of cars up on Cairn Street, the hiss and swish of their tyres on the road, but it seemed very distant suddenly, and China Row seemed far colder and lonelier than it usually did.

She was holding two knives when she came out of the darkness. Both had long, thin, black triangular blades. Old-style commando knives, I guessed. One glistened and dripped.

I stood up and stepped back from Ginger, who let out a last whistling breath which then rattled in his ruined throat. I hadn’t realised how much noise he’d been making—relatively, at least—until he stopped and the alley was silent.

She stood there, very still. There wasn’t, as far as I could see, a drop of blood on her, not counting the knife and the fingers of one preternaturally white—latex-gloved, I realised—hand. Her face was very pale, haloed by her dark hair, and utterly calm, almost like a Madonna. Dark eyes, studying me.

She cocked her head, lips pursed. I was a problem: not a threat, because she clearly knew how to deal with one of those and could have caught and finished me long before I reached the alley, but a puzzle, a conundrum. I’d come to help her, after all. And I wasn’t trying to run, or screaming for help or cops (which, in my experience, are rarely the same thing). All that, I suppose, is why she hesitated; for a few seconds, she had as little idea as me what to do next.

And so I said: Fancy a drink?

The corner of her mouth went up; then she showed her teeth in a small laugh, and nodded. All right, she said, then motioned with her blade in the general direction of Mulligan’s. Not there, though.

Obviously.

She moved across the alley, moved one of the bins aside, and took out a rucksack, shrugging it on. Know anywhere near the bus station?

Yeah.

Lead on, then.

But not from too great a distance, she added without actually saying it aloud. She was no more than a couple of paces behind me when we came out onto one of the city’s more populated streets, the knives out of sight but no doubt ready to be deployed at a second’s notice.

You broad-minded? I said, nodding in the direction of the Black Swan.

Take a guess.

I guessed she was, and led the way into the bar.

Once upon a time, the Swan had been the hub of the city’s queer community; these days it was more of an outlier, although it still had a loyal, if ageing, clientele of the drag queens who’d frequented it in its heyday. But when they’d built the new coach station—twenty years ago now, so not really so new—the Black Swan had had the good luck to be on the corner beside it, giving it a new lease of life from people just arriving or departing who wanted the permanent chill chased out of their bones.

Get us a drink, she said. Bottle of Beck’s for me.

I did as she told me to, plus a double Jameson’s for myself—the Swan sadly didn’t run to Bushmills—and joined her at the out-of-the-way corner table she’d selected. I didn’t sit too close; I didn’t want to crowd her, having seen how swiftly and decisively she reacted to anything she interpreted as a threat. Not to mention gruesomely. I had a mental flash of the dark, clotted thing lying in the alley a few yards from Ginger, and that little egg-shaped object beside it. I took a larger sip than I usually manage of the Jameson’s, and wished I’d ordered a triple.

The girl, meanwhile, had picked up her beer. She’d scooped up a couple of the paper napkins the Black Swan’s staff left on their tables—they serve food within certain hours—and wrapped it ’round the bottle’s neck. No fingerprints that way. Good at covering her tracks, this one.

You’ve done this before, haven’t you? I said.

She raised an eyebrow. Done what? Gone for a drink with a strange man in a gay bar?

What you did in the alley back there.

Keep your voice down. She wasn’t even looking at me while she said it, but scanning the bar; even so, and despite the lack of volume or inflection, I knew that was a threat. She spent a little longer taking in her surroundings, then returned her attention to me. You only just realised that?

I sighed. Suppose I always knew it. Ginger didn’t stand a chance, did he?

You’re sorry for him now?

I suppose a part of me was, having seen how thoroughly and brutally she’d dealt with him; besides, anyone dying like that is going to look so lost and alone in those last few seconds it’s hard not to feel a glimmer of pity, whatever they’ve done. But I shook my head. He got what he paid for, I said, which was just as true.

That he did. She smiled for the first time, and there was something oddly genuine and warm about it; in that moment she just looked like a girl, barely old enough to drink legally, who’d just heard a joke she liked. They always do.

Right.

I hadn’t meant to sound sceptical, but her smile faded. "Hey. You saw what happened. You didn’t come chasing after us for his sake, did you?"

No, I didn’t.

Well, then. Another swig of Beck’s, and she leant back in her seat. This is nice.

Really? I’ve heard the Swan called a lot of things over the years, but never that.

Mm. She closed her eyes. Actually being able to relax in someone’s company—’specially a man’s. Don’t think I’ve ever done that bef—

I only moved to pick up my drink, but that was enough; her eyes snapped open and she sat up straight, one hand in her pocket where her knife lived. After a moment she breathed out and settled back again. Sorry, I muttered.

Forget it. A sigh. Force of habit, I suppose. I’m out of practice relaxing. But it’s nice, all the same. Nice to be honest with someone for once.

Yeah, I can see that wouldn’t be an option.

It’s easier with women, she said. You can tell some of the truth. Cry them a river about abuse or whatever. But even then—it tends to mean having to play the victim. When she looked at me this time, all the warmth that had seemed to accumulate between us was gone; I think I actually drew back from her a tiny bit, hunched inside my parka against the sudden chill. And I don’t like that.

Sometimes it’s better to say nothing; I couldn’t think of any response that wouldn’t have sounded either fatuous or like clumsy, unsubtle probing. So I waited instead; if she wanted to talk, she would.

I never do anything, she said. Well, you saw that yourself, back in that shithole bar.

Hey, I said. That shithole bar’s my local.

She gave me a look that rendered words superfluous. I just need to go in and have a drink. That’s all I ever seem to need do. Have a drink and look halfway pretty—that’s all any girl needs to do in the right place, right time of night. Sometimes you don’t even need that. And they come trotting after you. Just like that little creep did tonight. She smiled now; it would have been warm and welcoming if not for the context. They think they’re going to have their fun with you.

And you disabuse them.

She nodded. Pretty much, yeah. She looked mildly impressed that I knew a fancy word like ‘disabuse.’ Well, as she’d said, opportunities for this kind of conversation couldn’t be common, so it must be nice to feel as though you were talking to someone with half a brain. It’s very easy, she said. Because they think it will be. They think it’s going to play out one way, and before they know it, it’s playing out the other. That’s half the battle right there; by the time they even realise they’re in trouble—

Their knackers are lying on the floor, I said.

She actually laughed out loud at that—a genuine laugh, like her smile a minute ago. You’re funny, she said, with what sounded like real—affection? No, that would be going too far. Warmth, anyway. "But yeah. I mean, not that I can’t handle myself in a fight, if one of them did know what’d hit him. I know that because I have. But nine times out of ten—ninety-nine out of a hundred, really—they never get that far."

Ninety-nine out of a hundred? I said. You’ve done that many?

The smile faded. I’ve actually lost count, she said. I’ll go somewhere new, enjoy myself for a bit, then catch the bus or the train or whatever before anyone starts asking questions. You’ve just got to keep moving.

Like a shark? I heard myself say. If you stop moving, you die?

That’s a myth, she said. About sharks. But— Another smile. I suppose, yeah. I kinda like that idea. And if you think about it, it’s a kind of public service. Cleaning up the streets.

How long have you been—

No idea. Feels like forever. Next question. There was a sudden, brittle coldness in her voice: I don’t want to explore that topic, it said. Move on if you know what’s good for you.

All right, I said. Why, then?

She gave me a long, cold look: I guessed—and it shouldn’t have been hard to—she found this question no less intrusive than the one before it. I remembered the knives and sat very still; I wanted to look around for potential escape routes if she went for me, but I was afraid to break eye contact. It was hard to gauge how long that moment lasted, but in the end she reached for her beer, picked it up again and took a swig. A man raped me, she said. He raped me and he got away with it. So I went after him and I punished him myself, and then I ran away, so that the police couldn’t get me. And since then I’ve got by by doing the same thing over and over again. Your friend, back in the alley there?

He wasn’t my friend —

Emptied his wallet out first. That’s how I do it. Revenge and money.

She finished her beer and put the empty bottle down. No?

What do you mean, no?

Is that a neat enough explanation or not? How about this? It was my daddy. He used to molest me when I was a little girl. Died before I ever got the chance to do anything about him. So now I’m getting my own back. Again: plenty of men like that out there, and there’s nowhere near enough being done about them. Which works better for you? Both are pretty clichéd, I know. The childhood trauma angle makes me more sympathetic, doesn’t it?

I just asked why.

"You did, yes. But those were the answers you were expecting, weren’t they?