Trauma

he had not. Its presence hints at a wrongness difficult to define. It reminds Cam

The bar is half full. Over to his left sits Ivan. He’s in a booth with three girls. Ivan is not his actual name, but it’ll do. He’s Russian, Cameron knows that much. The repeated ‘Nyet’ when he’s offered water is what gives him away. Already he and Cam have discussed a tunnel under the Bering Strait and West Ham’s prospects of staying in the Premier League. Ivan’s a lounge lizard. His hair is too long and dyed an improbable black. He’s dressed in a white shirt over a bronzed belly with buttons open to his navel. Underneath he wears a big gold chain and his shorts are tie-dyed. All the girls are blondes in short dresses and heels. They drink champagne out of coupes and chair dance in time to the steady beat of music.
Cam’s not sure what’s playing. Could be ‘Barbie Girl’, could be ‘Macarena’. Could be any one of several Europop clichés. Sneaky tunes that crawl into your head like a parasitic nematode.
The night is warm. Cam can’t feel the heat directly, but he makes the judgement from the way everyone is dressed. They’re up on a rooftop bar with garish lights strung from poles and cocktail waitresses in catsuits. Someone is smoking and a heady mix of tobacco and cannabis drifts over on a breeze with a seaweed hint of the ocean on its breath.
Not England. Not London. The warmth, the smells, the stagey music all give it a definite European flavour. But Cam never knows where this bar is. Not exactly.
The detail doesn’t matter.
He clutches a cold beer in his fist. A bottle with a quartered lime in its neck. The dark leather of the booth he sits in squeaks like a squeezed mouse when he moves. Away on the far side of the bar, in a corner, someone else sits with their back towards him. Just a vague shape. Impossible to tell if it’s a man or a woman because a deep, thick darkness cloaks all detail in that part of the bar.
Opposite, in the same booth as his, is a girl. Her face is candlelit. Cam doesn’t know her name, but he calls her Emma because… well, because something tells him he ought to. She has inky hair, pink lips and a great smile. That’s all he can make out. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to focus on her other features. But her mouth is wide and her teeth glimmer unnaturally. As does her blue-white dress and her tanned arms in the bar’s black light. It’s as if she’s illuminated from within like some ethereal sea creature from the depths.
‘Are you ready?’ asks faceless Emma.
‘No. I don’t see why we should,’ Cam replies.
‘Because we must. It’s already happened, silly.’
‘What if we don’t? What if we just sit here?’
Emma turns towards the vague shape sitting in the far corner. There’s movement. A face turns towards them, featureless, shifting, as if it can’t decide what form to take. And as Cam stares, the shadow surrounding it thickens and deepens like boiling miasma, masking the figure’s features except for a vague glint where there should be eyes. The overall impression Cam gets is that if he did ever see the face, he’ll end up wishing