The Ritual

He could cut into the thick trees further down the
track, drop and hide at ground level. The thought pushed him on, his exertions loud within his head. Every footfall jolted up his spine and seemed to widen the crack in his skull, which he would
never believe was not there until he dared look into a mirror again. Not being able to pump his arms was slowing him down.
    Eyes wild, teeth gritted, Fenris came at him from between the side of the truck and the shadowy rear of the house, looking to cut him off before he reached the track. A fat girl and a disturbed
teenager with their faces painted like corpses, or demons, or whatever they thought they were, were coming for him.
    Luke yanked at his wrist binding. Impotent fury welled up his throat. Even wearing big boots, Fenris was quick. Would have to be faced.
    Luke stopped, turned. Thought of kicking him, heel first. The approach of the girl to his right, distracted him. Cheeks puffed, chest heaving, little hands balled into fists, her washed-out eyes
widening: a high-pitched scream came out of her small mouth.
    Fenris pulled up short. Grinned. Danced sideways. Backwards. Cried out something inarticulate, shrieky, triumphant.
    A moment of indecision. Then Luke turned to the girl. She was almost upon him. He kicked everything he had into the gut of the rushing figure.
    Her forward momentum knocked him off his back leg and he was falling. There was a look of surprise, then fear at being hurt, on her face, and she bowed away. The grassy turf came up too fast and
slammed into Luke’s shoulders from behind.
    Fenris laughed. Clapped his hands against his thighs.
    The girl was bent double, silent, winded.
    Luke sat up quickly, swivelled his weight onto one buttock. Bent his left leg at the knee to propel himself upwards.
    The toe of Fenris’s boot struck him in the temple. Ice cracked inside his skull. Rivets opened his cheekbone. Red lights flared.
    When his vision juddered back down and settled, he was looking at a dead grey sky and could not close his mouth or clench his jaw. His ear whistled and the side of his head thumped hot.
    Again he tried to get up, but only succeeded in sitting before the girl’s snatching chubby fingers were in his hair. Something had come loose inside her, unhinged: he could see it in her
eyes. A belligerent keening sound, like sobbing but harder, came out of her.
    Whatever had dried shut along the top of his head, came apart under his hair with a sticky-tape sound and his scalp flooded hot. The pain made him go white all over; it enveloped him like an
immersion in cold water would. He withered into a faint.
    She pulled him back down to the earth, flattened his shoulders against the cold grass. He broke from the faint, but thought he would be sick. Couldn’t breathe. Thrust his hands upward,
fingers locked like he was in prayer. His knuckles sank under her small flat chin. She made a sound like air escaping quickly from a cushion, until her mouth clamped shut on the sound.
    Fenris stamped the corrugated sole of his big boot onto Luke’s face.
    Gristle popped. A streak of nose pain took the last of the strength from his limbs. The rubber sole twisted, rearranging the skin, and his features with it.
    Luke knew the fight was over. He was done. Spent.
    Surtr crowded out the light, dropped her heavy round knees onto his shoulders. Straddled his face. Through the delirium of pain, he caught her scent. She was yoghurty, sour-creamy, sebaceous. He
was smelling her cunt through a nose he knew to be smashed flat.
    Holding his hair, making rippy sounds, she yanked his head off the ground, then smashed it back down. Up again, then down.
    Then her weight was gone. Suddenly lifted clean off him. And Luke rolled onto his side and choked the rust rush of blood from out of his throat. Spat loops of bloody saliva from his mouth. The
sight of it frightened him. In what little of his mind was still working at its frantic scattering of thoughts, he visualized his face disfigured, his skull open, the organ inside grey and
shivering at the open sky. He prodded at his wet face with his fingertips. The skin was tight. An egg-shaped lump, hard as bone, had already risen where he had been kicked in the temple. Merely
touching it made him feel sick, so he stopped.
    Loki held on to his girlfriend, his acolyte, tightly. Spoke quickly and urgently into her disordered black hair. A smudge of her white face behind the fringe still peered intently at Luke, as if