Freaking Freak Read online

   

   

  *

   

   

  By the time I get home, I realise I need that shower more than ever.

  I want to wash away any memories of what I’ve just gone through, what I’ve just seen.

  Jackie, she couldn’t get me out of her door quick enough.

  ‘I’ve still got all my fingers, idiot,’ she’d screamed when I’d protested that she needed to get to hospital. ‘No one just loses fingers like that!’

  But she’d kept her hand hidden as she’d pushed me out onto the street.

  I slam the door to my own home behind me, making as much noise as possible.

  It serves as a warning to either Mum or Dad that I’m home.

  The last thing I need right now is to catch either one of them scrabbling to get dressed, to get their lover out of the way.

  ‘Mum? Dad?’ I cry out a few times, shouting up the stairs in particular.

  There’s no reply.

  With a sigh of relief, I head up to my room. And as soon as I enter, I see them.

  They’re neatly laid out across my dressing table.

  Next to their opened box.

  The gloves.

  The gloves are on my dressing table.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 13

   

  ‘Jackie, I’m really sorry, I honestly don’t know how it happened – but your gloves have somehow ended up on my dressing table.’

  When I’d called Jackie on the phone, it had rung for ages before she’d bothered answering with a harshly snapped, ‘Yes?’

  ‘My gloves?’ she says, like she’s no idea what I’m talking about. ‘They’re not my gloves anymore! They’re yours now, obviously!’

  ‘Mine? But I don’t understand. I didn’t want to keep them, wh–’

  ‘You don’t understand?’ Jackie screams back at me. ‘Of course you don’t understand!’

  ‘But I–’

  ‘You don’t understand anything, do you?’ she finally shrieks, slamming the phone down.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Just how odd is all this?

  I hang up the phone, placing it on my bedside cupboard.

  Did I really see Jackie’s fingers fall off her hand? Or did I imagine it?

  She certainly doesn’t seem to be in any rush to get to hospital.

  And now, almost as strange, she’s insisting that the gloves – the gloves aren’t lying on the dresser anymore!

  While I’ve been talking on the phone, they’ve vanished. Only the empty box is still there.

  I rush over to my dresser, quickly checking that the gloves haven’t fallen to the floor. Checking that, somehow, they haven’t ended up back in their box.

  ‘Looking for these?’ a voice behind me asks.

  I whirl around.

  A man is half leaning against the door frame. He grins. He’s holding and lovingly caressing the gloves.

  ‘Who are you?’ I demand, backing farther away from him. ‘What are you doing here? Are you with Mum? If you are, you shouldn’t be in my room!’

  ‘Hah! That’s a fine welcome, isn’t it Jill? And after all I’ve done for you too!’

  ‘Done for me? What do you mean? I’ve never met you before. You’ve never done anything for me!’

  Come to think of it, he doesn’t look like the type of man Mum goes for. Her type’s all young and athletic, with hair that looks like it’s just been coiffured at the hairdressers. This guy, though, looks like he takes all his style tips from Tim Burton or the Cure. There’s probably a bit of Willy Wonka or Mad Hatter thrown in for good measure.

  It’s that weird air of freakiness that Jackie always manages to exude.

  ‘Jackie’s father?’ I ask edgily, nodding towards the gloves he’s holding. ‘Are you Jackie’s father? You’ve come for your gloves?’

  ‘Jackie’s father?’ he chuckles. ‘My gloves?’ he chuckles again. ‘I suppose that, yes, come to think of it, in some ways you could say that, yes, yes, that I am Jackie’s father in a way, couldn’t you? Yes, yes; I like that, I really do!’

  He says it like he’s pondering all this for the very first time, all eyes staring at the ceiling, a puzzled frown, a hand on his chin.

  ‘Though not, of course, in the way that you mean – her natural father. Oh no no! I’m far from being her natural father!’

  At last, he looks directly at me once again. He holds out the gloves towards me, as if expecting me to take them from him.

  ‘As for the gloves; as Jackie correctly informed you, Jill – the gloves are yours, not mine!’

  I still hang back, even though I’m bizarrely tempted to take the gloves, despite everything I’ve now learned about them.

  ‘So,’ I say sternly, frustrated and irate that he’s refusing to give me a clear answer to my questions, ‘who are you?’

  He grins again, waving a hand around in front of his face as if he’s about to give me an exaggerated, theatrical bow.

  He doesn’t bow. Rather, he stands up straighter, taking on a proud and imperious air.

  ‘I’m the Freak King,’ he declares. ‘Freak King Freak.’

   

   

  *

   

   

  ‘The Freak King?’ I ask, puzzled. ‘And…what? Your name is also Freak? Freak King Freak?’

  ‘That’s right!’

  He smiles, like he’s said enough and doesn’t see any reason to elaborate.

  I laugh.

  Am I dreaming? Why aren’t I kicking this man out of my room? Why aren’t I calling the police?

  Because he sounds serious. And so many frankly incredibly freaky things have happened to me recently that…well, someone announcing himself as King of the Freaks doesn’t come close to what I’ve been through.

  Surviving a fall that should have killed me. Wearing gloves that let me relive someone else’s life. Seeing my best friend’s fingers drop off.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Joke’s over; so what’s your real name?’

  He observes me curiously, like he’s surprised or even a little bit annoyed that I’m still failing to get on board with whatever it is he’s trying to get across to me.

  ‘Freak; the name’s Freak, as I’ve just told you. It’s still the same as it was then. It hasn’t changed. Not one bit of it has changed.’

  ‘So you’re the Freak King and just coincidently happen to be called Freak too?’ I say doubtfully.

  ‘That’s right!’ he says cheerfully, like I’ve finally got it and, once again, he’s going to stay schtum, with no attempt at any further explanation.

  ‘Right about me being called Freak, anyway,’ he suddenly adds. ‘Though, there’s nothing coincidental about it, of course! My people were named after me. They became Freaks because I was their King and I was called Freak!’

  ‘Oh sure,’ I scoff.

  ‘What about the Elizabethans, the Georgians, the Victorians? And the Franks – surely there must have been a King Frank, don’t you think?’

  He says it all with a twinkle in his eyes, like he’s knows he’s still avoiding answering my questions.

  ‘I mean,’ I say, ‘that freaks have been around for gawd knows how many years; whereas you, right, you must be forty, tops, I guess.’

  I’ve actually deliberately been a bit harsh on him. He could be in his early thirties for all I know. With all that garish gothic makeup, the electrified hair, it’s not really easy to tell.

  He clasps his hands gaily. I’m almost expecting him to burst into a happy little jig.

  ‘Jill, Jill; how absolutely delightful of you! I can see we are going to get on well, after all! Despite my previous doubts! I made a good choice after all!’

  ‘Choice?’ Wow, this guy keeps on throwing the bizarre statements at me, doesn’t he? ‘What’s this
choice you’ve made?’

  He almost steps back in astonishment. I get the curious look from him once more, like all this should be making perfect sense to me by now.

  ‘Why, you of course, Jill!’ he announces joyfully. ‘I’ve chosen you to be one of my subjects!’

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 14

   

  As soon as I’m back at school in the afternoon, I’m looking for Jackie.

  I’m hoping she can begin to explain all the things the Freak King failed to explain.

  Which is just about everything.

  ‘What? You can’t just go choosing who’s going to be one of your subjects!’ I’d protested when he’d so imperiously declared that I was now a freak.

  He’d ginned, nodded in agreement.

  ‘That would be madness, wouldn’t it?’ he’d chuckled. ‘But then again, if the chosen effectively agrees to the choice I’ve made? Well, then of course, everything’s perfectly legitimate, don’t you think?’

  He’d suddenly tossed the gloves towards me, aiming them towards my face. I’d caught them; and by the time I’d dropped my hands away from my face, he’d vanished.

  I’d rushed to the door of my bedroom. But he was nowhere to be seen.

  Jackie, on the other hand, is a lot easier to find than I’d expected.

  I was worried that she might not even be here, that she might, instead, have finally decided to head off to hospital to have her hand looked at.

  But she strides across the school yard towards me, smiling, calling out, ‘Jill, Jill!’ – and waving her hand up in the air, like she’s deliberately drawing my attention to the fact that all her fingers are securely back in place.

   

   

  *

   

   

  ‘Sorry Jill!’ Jackie breathes urgently, like she wants to get her piece in before I get around to saying anything. ‘I mean, for the joke I played earlier.’

  Joke?

  I’m not quite sure what she means, but my hopes begin to rise that all this thing with the gloves, with the Freak King, is all some elaborate joke Jackie has somehow managed to organise.

  ‘It was all a bit sick I suppose, wasn’t it?’ she adds with a grin.

  The grin’s not quite right. It’s still a little bit lopsided, if not as much as it was at lunchtime. Her skin’s also caked with a ridiculous amount of makeup, even more than usual. Her hair’s still oddly draped over one side of her face.

  As for my own face, the doubts I’m feeling must be perfectly apparent because Jackie decides that she’s just going to have to keep on talking.

  ‘With the fingers, I mean!’ She wriggles her fingers right in front of my nose. ‘It was a trick, using fake fingers. Well, the ones that dropped to the floor, anyway! They were fake!’

  Her hand does look normal once again. Then again, she’s wearing so many rings that her fingers could be being held in place by them alone. That wouldn’t account for the way she can move them though, would it?

  I realise there’s not really any point in challenging her claim that it was all just some sick joke. She’s obviously determined to give the impression that everything’s fine. That she never, ever lost any fingers, like I quite clearly saw.

  Besides, I really can’t work out how she’s standing in front of me with all her fingers back in place.

  ‘The gloves,’ I blurt out instead, a little more desperately than I intended. ‘I’ve got your gloves. They’re yours, and you can have them back as soon as you want.’

  I figure that as the gloves are somehow connected with the Freak King, getting rid of them means I also get rid of him.

  Jackie grins hugely, the unevenness of her face more apparent than ever. Shades of the Joker and that other guy from Batman with the split face. She waves an admonishing finger.

  ‘Ah ah ah! No can do. They’re yours now. But let me guess why you suddenly don’t want “those magical gloves”.’

  She says the last bit in an ecstatically high pitched screech, mocking the way I would excitedly reach for the gloves. I grimace at the memory.

  ‘I can see it in your eyes, Jill,’ Jackie continues triumphantly. ‘The shock, the bewilderment – the fear! The Freak King’s been to visit, hasn’t he?’

  ‘So you do know him! I thought you must, what with the gloves, and you been a…a…’

  Jackie laughs, relishing this moment.

  ‘Go on; say it, Jill! Freak.’

  She leans towards me like we have a secret to share.

  ‘It takes one to know one, doesn’t it Jill?’

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 15

   

  ‘Is he mad?’ I frantically ask Jackie. ‘Who is he? Is he dangerous? He’s crazy, isn’t he?’

  ‘Ha, you wish! No, he’s real enough I’m afraid!’ Jackie chortles, savouring my anguish once more. ‘And he’s told you, yeah, that you’re now a freak, right?’

  ‘Yes, yes; but he is crazy, surely? He can’t just tell me I’m one of his subjects – a freak!’

  ‘Oh no, of course he can’t!’

  Hey eyes blaze with amusement as she watches the relief flash across my face.

  ‘Yet here you are,’ she adds bluntly. ‘Which means that, yep, you’re now a freak; whether you want to be or not.’

  ‘What? How does me being here make me a freak?’

  ‘Not here, as in here at school, idiot! I mean here – back in the world of the living!’

  She waves her arms and raises her head, like she’s drawing my attention to the whole world surrounding us, to life in general.

  She smiles benignly at me – then instantly transforms the smile into an angry snarl.

  ‘Because we both know you shouldn’t be here!’

  I’m completely taken aback by her fury.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be here?’ I retort with as much confidence as I can.

  She can’t know about my suicide attempt, can she? Unless Fiona was there, and she’s told Jackie.

  ‘Oh come on, Jill!’ Jackie sneers. ‘Don’t go giving me any more of all this bull that you fell into some bushes. You jumped – jumped off Kingstown Bridge. Which means you’d be dead, if the Freak King hadn’t saved you.’

  ‘No one saved me!’ I snap back. ‘I just somehow survived, that’s all! I don’t know how but–’

  ‘“I just somehow survived!”’ Jackie repeats in a sarcastically squeaky voice. ‘No one survives a fall like that – even a coroner wouldn’t have found much of you to cut into!’

  Reaching out, she brusquely grabs me by my cheek, turning my head up and to one side so she can peer intently at my neck.

  ‘Now the Freak King’s operation, that’s in a different world all together!’ she says, swiftly running a finger along my neck as if she’s trying to feel something there.

  The operation!

  I’d thought it had all been a weird dream! What with all the mangles, the ropes, the body parts – the freaks!

  ‘It really happened? The operation really happened?’ I squeal in horror, instinctively bringing my own hand up towards my throat to see if I can feel any traces of the treatment I’d received.

  Oh no!

  I can feel a slight rise beneath my skin, like a long-healed scar.

  Like my head has been sewn back on to my body.

  Like Frankenstein’s monster.

  Observing the growing terror in my widening eyes, Jackie smiles in satisfaction.

  ‘Has he asked you for payment yet?’

  ‘Payment?

  ‘You owe him your life, Jill! An operation like that – it doesn’t come cheap.’

  ‘How much?’ I gulp. ‘I haven’t got much mone–’

  ‘Money?’ Jackie chuckles wickedly.

  She turns to leave, looking back over her shoulder with a triumphant sne
er.

  ‘If only, eh Jill? But I’m afraid your King will be wanting far more than money!’

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 16

   

  As I approach my home, I see that a number of lights are already on.

  I groan.

  Not because it means that either my mum or dad are home. Which is the usual reason why I’d groan.

  No, these are just the lights set to automatically come on to give the impression that someone’s in.

  Which means Mum and Dad are still out.

  Which means I’ll be in the house on my own once more.

  ‘Mum? Dad?’ I shout hopefully as I enter the hall.

  No answer.

  Please, please, please, if they’re not home, please let the house be completely empty!

  Please, please, please don’t let the Freak King be here, waiting for me!

  I rush up the stairs two at a time in my hurry to get to my room. As soon as I’ve checked that there’s no one waiting for me in there, I slam the door shut behind me, locking it with a relieved sigh.

  I look at the gloves, still hanging over the edge of my dresser where I’d left them earlier.

  The cause of all my troubles.

  They’re part of the ‘deal’, aren’t they?

  They’re mine because I’m now a freak.

  And I’m a freak because I’d worn them, enjoying the sensations they were giving me.

  Not realising suicidal tendencies were all part of the package.

  Rushing across to the dresser, I pick up the gloves and angrily throw them to the floor. I frenziedly stamp on them, rub my feet on them, trying to destroy them

  I pick them up again, vigorously pull on them, trying to tear them, to rip them to shreds.

  I can’t. I can’t damage them in anyway.

  They’re ridiculously strong. Perhaps even indestructible!

  I crumple to the floor, weeping in frustration.

  I can’t get rid of them. And, even if I did, would that really get rid of the Freak King too?

  Probably not. Let’s face it, getting out of whatever deal I’ve got myself into here isn’t going to be that easy, is it?

  I hold up the gloves, studying them.

  Know what? What’s the betting they’re not really Jackie’s grandma’s?

  Yeah, I’ve been a little slow on the uptake on that one, haven’t I?

  I mean, would she really let them go so easily if they really were some precious family heirloom?

  She’s probably glad to see the back of them. As I would be.

  She’s a freak too, right? So, she probably had them given to her by the Freak King. As part of her own ‘deal’.

  That explains the earlier pictures of her when she was at the other school.

  When she was pretty.

  When she was fun to be with.