Orc g1rl, p.1
ORC G1RL, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
About the Author
Other Books by Gill McKnight
ORC G1RL
Gill McKnight
Copyright © 2023, Gill McKnight
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including recording, printouts, information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead or to business establishments or events is coincidental.
Cover design by Jove Belle
For Ramona McKnight
Chapter 1
The first snowball catches me behind my right ear. It hurts like hell, so I know there’s a stone in it. The second hits my shoulder and I run. Then it’s raining snowballs all around me. They must have been making hundreds of the bastard things while I was at piano lessons. And there’s something else. A horrible smell. Cat shit. They’ve put cat turds in some of the snowballs. Who sits around putting cat shit in snowballs on a night like this? Would the good Lord please give these assholes a busier life?
I’m on East Danube Street and well ahead of them, but I can hear footsteps catching up. I’m sprinting now. Putting my best effort into it. Backpack slapping, feet skidding through slush. A head start is the only advantage I have. If they catch me, they’ll try and make me eat a shitty snowball or something equally stupid, and when I refuse, they’ll thump me which is what they really wanted to do all along.
I race down the alley between East Danube and Irrawaddy. It’s overgrown and the branches pull at my legs and elbows. I lose my beanie. Hard breathing and the swish of branches behind means Marco is almost upon me. He’s faster than Denny. He’s on the athletics team and I was stupid to think I could outrun him. I grab at a bare branch. It looks frosty and spiteful. I bend it back like a spring as I run by, then let go. A hand yanks my backpack. I hear the swoosh of the branch whip and a smack, and I hear a yip of pain as it catches Marco full face. I hope it blinds him.
My backpack is ripped from me. Marco may be squealing but his grip hasn’t eased. I run out onto Irrawaddy Avenue. It’s a busy street and I’m suddenly aware I’ve lost Marco. Either he’s nursing a sore face or is too wary to come out into the streetlight. Marco is a wuss in bully clothing. A pretty boy who can’t cope with a scratch.
“What the fuck?” Denny shouts. Marco’s backup has arrived.
I teeter on the curbside, ready to run into the flow of traffic and take my chances. Except that a black van pulls up before me.
“C’mon, we can still—” Denny’s ugly little words are lost in the metallic thunk of the side-door yanking open.
The van’s bench seats hold several people, all looking at me disgruntled.
“Where was you?” The driver hollers over his shoulder. “Ger’in. We’re late already.”
“Great start, kid,” his co-driver grumbles. “Do you want this job or what?”
I feel the prickle of Denny’s and Marco’s evil intent between my shoulder blades. My backpack is lost. If I hang around, I’ll be ripped apart along with it, especially after whacking Marco up the slimy kisser. My brain and body are stressed out and exhausted. I’m frightened and beyond any sensible reasoning. So, I get in.
It’s a mistake. I know it as soon as my ass hits the seat. Perhaps even before then. Perhaps as I lifted my foot to step forward. Perhaps as I weighed one danger against the other. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. I’ve been stupid. Very, very stupid.
Mom will kill me if this lot don’t.
Let me recap, since my life is flashing before my eyes anyway.
You don’t need to know my name. It’s hardly used anyway. Among my peers I go by, “Hey, Orc!”
Only adults use my real name. It’s Orc to everyone else, and by everyone else, I mean coke spitters, book kickers, head-to-wall slammers, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam. I mean school bullies. Unimaginative, underdeveloped, tiresome, subspecies bullies.
Regular, better-adjusted kids with access to conscionable parenting are more careful how they address me. Using my name can call down bad luck, and to be fair, nobody wants to draw the wrong kind of attention. I may not be Orc to those kids but I’m not me either. I’m basically anonymous.
There are good things, too. Not every day is a school day. If it wasn’t for about seventy percent of the people using it, I’d like school. I’m good at it. I’m a cruising A scholar and I’m taking off like a rocket once I can get out of here.
What else? I love my family, which seems rare these days, especially for my peer group. My sanity is preserved by my music lessons. Grandma Brenna pays for those. And I have the house to myself most evenings—huge bonus.
Mom is a night manager at the port warehouses and leaves for work before I get home from school. That way, I don’t have to avoid her eyes and make up lies about the day I’ve had. I change into sweats, eat whatever’s in the crockpot, and do my homework before curling up with Hulu until three in the morning. I stretch out the weeknights. If I fall asleep too soon, another school day creeps in on me.
So. What happened to make this school day particularly burdensome? Well, I got a little intel for a start.
“They’re going to ambush you after your music lesson. I overheard Denny talking to Marco.” Sita is all doe-eyed with her news. She’s a decent person and prone to handwringing at social injustice. I appreciate the tip-off.
Her warning is unsettling. I haven’t been targeted outside of school for a long time. Not since I became old enough to juke the bus and make my own way home. I walk everywhere now, taking shortcuts through the nicer neighborhoods. There’s usually something to perk my interest. People with money are always evolving, always switching things out and changing things around. Repainted house facades, landscaped gardens, a new car to go with the new lawn. I find it vaguely anthropological.
Mrs. Appleby, my music teacher, is on Nile, next up from Indus, where Denny Reese lives, so I guess he’s pegged me going in and out of lessons. Denny is a thug. I hate him most out of all of them. And I mean hate in a tumorous, metastatic way. I need him cut out of my life. I spend too much time imagining a multitude of ways to do it. Painful ways like in a Garden of Earthly Delights way. The full triptych. It’s possibly my favorite pastime.
The rest of his shitty gang are products of his syphilitic gastrointestinal tract. They stink, but Denny is something else. He’s a twisted fuck. He likes to inflict pain. He’ll grow into an evil man who’ll beat his women and shake his babies. He’ll cut up his girlfriends and any man who so much as looks at them. He’ll spend so much time in prison he’ll be homesick when he’s out. That’s my greatest wish for him—an unhappy, diseased life.
The canteen has a There Be Dragons sticker on my internal school map, so I take my packed lunch to some quiet corner and eat quickly. One eye open for roving hyena packs, who thrive on stolen fodder. Today is Thursday, so it’s tuna and piano lessons. Neat. Usually, Thursdays are good—until Sita’s hot tip. Now Denny is going to ruin a whole lot of things for me. I can’t miss the music lesson, it’s already paid for, and besides, I like my piano lessons. I like Mrs. Appleby. She’s kind and always has a glass of milk and a cookie waiting, even though I’m too old for all that. But I take it anyway.
Why does Denny have to live so close? Why does he have to ruin everything?
I’m lunching in the far corner of the science lab. Chemistry is scheduled next. Another winner for Thursdays—the entire afternoon is based in the science labs. I excel at physics, chemistry, and biology. The labs have always been a sanctuary. It’s peaceful and the weird smells are oddly comforting. Outside, huge fluffy snowflakes drift past the window. I like walking in the snow. The walk to Mrs. Appleby’s will be muffled and remote, as if the world can’t touch me ’cos I’m not really part of it.
James Malone is my lab partner and, like me, enjoys the subject and is clever. I get along fine with James, except for his annoying habit of drooling across the classroom at Sita. Puberty takes no prisoners, and James’s crushing is humiliating to witness.
“James? Wake up!”
He starts. “Sorry. What?”
“Check the temperature,” I repeat and roll my eyes.
“Oh.” He jumps to attention but it’s pitiful. I caught him red-handed ogling Sita, currently messing up her own experiment several benches away. She’s atrocious at math and science, but excels at languages, but is especially good at English literature, where she gushes like a broken watermain over Heathcliff, Rochester, and the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Poor James, competing with the likes of them.
After my music lesson, I’m nervous about going outside but don’t show it. I don’t want to upset Mrs. Appleby. It’s still snowing, and dark and cold, and maybe Denny and Marco got tired of waiting. What sensible person loiters outside on a night like this
I take the opposite direction than I normally would and head north on Nile. It’s circuitous but they don’t know I’m expecting an ambush and I don’t know exactly where the ambush will be. Maybe this will scupper their plans. And then a snowball whacks my ear and I’m sitting in a van with a pile of strangers.
If I disappear, Mom will be so pissed with me.
Chapter 2
Several sets of eyes fix on me. They gleam ferociously from under hoodies, beanies, and patterned headscarves. Everyone shuffles furtively along the bench away from me. Someone sniffs. As the van moves off, there’s a clatter from the rear, startling me. A handful of mops and brooms have fallen over. There are plastic buckets, too, and boxes of detergent and other cleaning products.
“Don’t be late next time,” the driver scolds, his dark gaze skewering me through the rearview mirror. “I had to round the block twice.”
The young guy sitting opposite gives a shy supportive grin before dipping his head. I say nothing and nobody else speaks as we drive on through the night. There are no side windows, so I’ve no idea where we’re going until pink neon reflects through the windshield and I realize we’re downtown.
A few minutes later, we pull into an underground parking lot, where the fluorescent lighting is merciless. The big guy tucked in the passenger seat unfolds from the cab to slide open the door so we can spill out. I’ve no idea what to do. I decide to simply walk away and find an alternative way home. I’ve enough change for a bus.
“Slyder, get the gear,” the co-driver orders the young guy who smiled at me earlier.
Slyder pulls out the mops, brooms, dustpans, and about a dozen plastic buckets. He reaches back for the boxes of cleaning stuff. The boxes are heavy but he’s strong. His back is as wide as a Humvee. In fact, all these people are on the short side but well built, though they move lightly to snatch up the equipment and trudge toward a side exit. I’m loitering at the back of the group because I haven’t a clue what’s going on and I’m nosy and not thinking straight. Should I creep away now? When’s the best moment? The street exit is just over there, I could maybe sidle over and slip away. I could catch the next bus to Irrawaddy and look for my backpack.
“Here.” Slyder smiles and hold out a mop and bucket. His smile is warm and friendly and my worry sort of melts. He’s the only one paying me any attention. I don’t feel threatened by anybody here. Tension slides from my shoulders. It’s a nice feeling after the evening I’ve had.
There has obviously been a mistake. I’m not the person they were meant to collect. I should say something, except that Slyder has slammed the van shut and suddenly we’re all action.
“Over here.” He hefts a box and follows the others, and I follow him. And, yes, it’s an extremely stupid thing to do. The other option is to dump my cleaning products at my feet and walk away. Except I feel I’m helping Slyder carry stuff. It would be rude to jettison it all over the floor.
Just to the door, I tell myself. I’ll cart this stuff to the door and pay it forward a little. I might even explain there’s been a mistake before taking my leave. Act like an adult, Mom would say. Plus, I’m sort of curious.
Ahead is a service elevator. A huge contraption for moving furniture, appliances, and probably service workers like this crew. I have been somehow swallowed by bodies carrying cleaning stuff and am being swept along. We step in the elevator, seven of us in total, and the driver guy hits a button. Up we trundle. In silence. I’ve lost my mind, I decide. I’m in shock and my brain capacity is limited due to a lack of oxygen from all that running. Then again, tonight could have been much worse than this.
Up, up, and up we go. How high is this building?
Another concern is the tension growing in the elevator. Under the bright lights, hoods and scarves are drawn down farther. Shoulders stiffen. Fingers clench around brush shafts. I’m in a D-Day landing craft. I flick Slyder a sideways glance, but he is staring at the floor as grim-faced as the others. My curiosity will be the death of me, if a lack of common sense doesn’t get me snuffed first.
On the ding, we disgorge into an unremarkable service corridor of concrete floors and unpainted walls. The guy who drove us here is obviously the head honcho. He leads us to another door and opens it with a keycard on a lanyard around his neck and we enter the luxurious hallway on the residents’ side. There are thick carpets, potted plants, and art on the walls. Two doors lead off from here. One to the residents own elevator, and the other to the only apartment on this floor. This is the penthouse.
Several keys are needed to open the locks on this door. Click, click, more clicks, and we enter the foyer of the most lavish apartment I have ever seen. Nothing, not even the YouTube design vlogs I’m semi-addicted to compare to what awaits me. The walls are glass from floor to ceiling—and the ceiling is far, far away. I’m in the penthouse of the tallest building in our city, gazing out on a maze of lights. It’s snowing big fluffy chunks, and everything is as sparkly and magical as a Hallmark Christmas movie set.
From here, my shitty little city looks frickin’ amazing. I stand and gawp. I can see the twinkling green neon on the Hi Lux shopping mall, and the blue of the Hilton hotel. There’s the Griffin Theater and the Independence Hall Arts complex, and beside it, The Liberty Museum. All these familiar landmarks sparkle at me from a dizzying angle. I see the war memorial uplit on Knopp Hill. The flat white light of the airport away in the distance, with red and green flashes rising and falling as flights come and go. And there’s the port where Mom works. The dazzle of warehouse, gantry, and port lights zigzag out over the black water. It all looks magical. This apartment is the most beautiful place I have ever been in.
“Pretty, ain’t it?” Slyder is at my shoulder. He gives a gentle nudge to ease me out of my stupor. “Shoes off or Antal will shout.” Everyone has kicked their footwear into a pile by the door. My tatty sneakers join them. What else can I do?
Antal is the driver and the boss. He stands sock soled on a carpet of sea-foam green, surrounded by white leather and smoked glass, giving out orders in a quiet voice. “Bezume and Wigmar, kitchen.”
A man and a woman pick up their mops and buckets and slip away.
“Maroom, you and Slyder take the newbie to the bathroom.” A woman gives me and Slyder a kind, matronly smile and indicates that we follow her.
As we leave, I hear Antal say to the big guy who rode up front with him, “Prep the bags, Jaah. Might need a double layer this time.”
So, I have names. Strange names. I wonder if they are immigrants working a nightshift. I idly wonder if they’re illegal, they all seem so quiet and intense. I can’t blame them. America is not a healthy place these days. Mom says these are scary times.
Mom is right. Mom is very right.
Scary times is flash fried onto my brain when we open the bathroom door. There is blood everywhere. It’s dripping off the ceiling fixtures. Spattered on the wall tiles. Pooling on the floor. It’s startlingly scarlet against the white sanitary wear. It’s dark ruby on the veined marble floor and in black rivulets gummed along the grout.
My brain freezes. My knees tingle and begin to buckle. I grip the doorframe to stay upright, damned if I’m going to swoon into this mess. Maroom and Slyder hesitate, too, but only for a second, as if assessing before they pull on rubber gloves, plastic smocks, and waterproof bootees over their socks.
Maroom notices me stalling by the door. My face must say it all because she becomes concerned. “Sweet one.” Her hand is heavy on my shoulder and almost does in my trembling knees. “Are you okay?” she murmurs. She speaks softly, and no wonder. This has to be a murder scene.
“First time?” Slyder looks over from where he’s set up the showerhead to rinse out the luxury shower. The luxury shower that has lumps of something slippery and red in it, which he scoops up with his gloved hands. He slips me a look of sympathy and dumps someone’s scalp into a bucket.
Maroom sighs. “It’s always bad the first time,” she says. Her hand draws comforting circles between my shoulder blades. She’s so strong, she almost shreds my lungs through my ribcage. “Once you get used to the clients, you sort of know what to expect.”
