SHE DIGS by SAM BARKER

Susan whirled round, silken hair flying outwards to form an almond halo as she spun. Johnny watched her yeasty cleavage wobble to a halt. She had turned to look again at the A2 board of photos that the gang, now only four in number, had spread out against the white background. Several photos had large red crosses through them.

“So,” she stared from Johnny to Lauren, her remaining friends, “she started with old Mr Hawks in his garden, then she got Bill, Kylie, Francie, James and last night, Constable Dents. We’re on our own here, guys.”

Susan took the red pen from her pocket and put a cross through constable Dents’ picture.

Johnny glanced from Susan’s Swedish pastry good looks to Lauren’s short haired manic frizzball of a head and sighed inwardly, he was scared. He wanted to go home and hide beneath the covers, but as the toughest male left alive (Bodybuilder Bill had been one of the first to go) he felt it was up to him to be strong for the girls. He searched for some reassuring words.

“We’re all gonna die” he settled on, “she’s.... like, unstoppable!”

“No one’s unstoppable.” Lauren stated simply, in the same calm, quiet, measured voice she used for everything, from choosing macaroons to rationalising about super-human serial killers.

“She’s tougher than week old walnut cake!” Johnny moaned again.

“No, she’s right.” Susan excitedly pointed at Lauren. “I mean, what can she do? She can dig fast, that’s not so special!”

“Susan!” Johnny’s voice always quivered when he screamed. “Susan she doesn’t just ‘dig fast’. She’s like a fucking human mole. Into the ground one place, pops up seconds later behind you. There’s nothing you can do! We don’t even know what she looks like. She’s killed the cop sent to protect us, she’s-”

“Stop getting hysterical,” Lauren’s no nonsense voice cut across like a bread knife through buns. “She relies too much on her spade. If we take that away, there’s nothing she can do. There’s four of us, we can-”

Lauren’s voice cut out as it became obvious that only three living people and two mangled corpses occupied the front room of her house. The other two seemed to realise the same thing.

“Shit! Stanley,” there was a bitter horror in Susan’s voice, “He should have been here by now.”

“Something,” Lauren spoke slowly, trying out a horrible idea as she went. “Something must have happened to him…”

They all nodded, and Susan slowly put a red cross through Stanley’s picture. Johnny took the moment to reflect morosely on Susan’s organisational skills. Their pictures were all on the board, just ready for the crossing out.

They stood in sad, uncomfortable silence for a moment. Johnny couldn’t stand it, he needed to break the quiet.

“Still,” he said, trying to sound cheerful, “No great loss, eh?”

The girls stared at him, even Lauren’s usually ineffable countenance cracked with disgust.

Shit, thought Johnny.

“Nonono,” he blithered defensively, “What I meant was…. Better people have already gone…”

The stares weren’t improving.

“I mean, James… He could have been a professional athlete, I mean, man, he was fast!”

They still hated him, improve the mood Johnny, tell a joke.

“Not fast enough though, hah?” Johnny, you are such an idiot.

“Or Kylie, the baps on her…,” Johnny‘s brain had shut down, leaving just his mouth and his honest opinions as disastrous bedfellows. He edged towards the window, ready to escape the horrified expressions of the girls.

“Terrible shame…” He shook his head sadly and prepared to dive through glass for freedom-

There was a bang on the door. They all looked round.

“Oh, thank god,” Johnny gasped in relief, “It’s the killer.”

The girls stood in stony silence.

“Guys!?” a high pitched, cracking male voice came, “Can you let me in?”

There were cries of Joy all round as Lauren opened the door and Stanley stumbled in, pausing only to hit his head on the doorframe due to his excessive height. Lauren hugged him, Johnny shook his hand and Susan stayed by the board, licked her thumb and tried desperately to rub the red cross from Stanley’s face.

“Thank god you’re all right mate,” Johnny enthused. He found that now Stanley was alive, he really was quite glad after all.

Stanley sniffed and shook his long curly gingerbread hair away from his thick rimmed spectacles, “You didn’t think I was dead, did you?” he asked nervously.

“Of course not!” Susan snapped a little too quickly, stepping sideways to cover the board and rubbing ever harder.

“Well, I’ve got great news guys!” Stanley quavered, his Adams apple bobbing like a granny smith in a tub of water, “I caught the serial killer!”

Everyone stood, dumbfounded, staring at their heroic nerd of a friend.

“How?” Lauren asked the question on everyone’s lips.

“Well,” even as he relaxed into the tale Stanley couldn’t keep away the squeaks of excitement that were a regular trait of his voice, “I was walking here, I was worried. Scared I might be next. Suddenly I noticed that my shoe-lace was undone, so I bent down to tie it up and I felt something whiz over my head. When I turned round there was the killer, lying unconscious on the floor with her spade next to her! I think she’d jumped up and tried and hit me with her spade, and when I ducked… she missed and fell over! So I broke her shovel on a tree so she couldn‘t dig anymore, and I locked her up!”

“My god, that’s amazing!” Susan cried, looking at Stanley in a new… oddly amorous light. “Without a spade, there’s nothing she can do!”

Johnny could see her affection sifting onto him like the first fall of caster sugar, but he wasn’t jealous. How could he be jealous of the guy who’d caught the killer?

“That’s just great Stan,” Johnny felt like he could kiss him, “so, what did you do with her?”

“Ahha! I thought of that too,” Stanley rode on the wave of heroism like a pro, proudly unfurling his genius to the mortal onlookers. “I needed somewhere she wouldn’t get out, somewhere safe, somewhere nearby…”
“Yes?” encouraged Lauren.
“So I put her in the garden shed, and locked it up!” he declared proudly.

Everyone’s grins froze.

“The garden shed?” said Susan slowly.

Stanley nodded, feeling suddenly unsure of himself.

“The garden shed…” Lauren‘s voice stayed calm, but became increasingly sharp and clipped, “…. the garden shed. With all the gardening implements in. Like rakes, garden forks and…” her glace cherry lips began to quiver, “shovels?!?”

Stan nodded again, soufflé face caving in. There was a moments silence and then-

“You fool!” Johnny screamed, hurling himself at Stanley, “You fucking doughnut! She digs! She digs! You’ve just given her a fucking arsenal. It’s like locking a baker in a bakery with flour and water and yeast so he can’t bake fucking bread you imbecile!”

Susan let her friend get a few good hits in to Stanley’s doughy face before shouting, “Enough!”

Johnny shifted in his seat on Stanley’s chest to look at her.

“Look,” she breathed, “maybe if we hurry we can get out there before she wakes up.”

Johnny coughed slightly and nodded; helped Stanley up.

The garden was in full, glorious, summer bloom as the surviving foursome hurried down the path, sticking together like caramel and glancing about suspiciously. The sun shone, brightly reflected from the multitude of colours occupying the flowerbeds. Johnny nearly jumped out of his skin as a pure white fragment of blossom floated lazily from a nearby tree to land upon his shoulder. He impatiently brushed it off.

Step by step they followed the path of flat stones nesting within the lush green grass, the path that lead to the shed. They came to a final stop just in front and took a deep communal breath.

“Well, the lock’s still on,” Stanley mumbled, still nursing his nose.

“That’s a good sign… right?”

Stanley held the key up, everyone seemed to hesitate, then took a step backwards in fear. Stanley stumbled wildly over a small log, ending up on his back.

Susan sighed, her patience all but spent, she steeled herself, strode forward and snatched the key from Stanley’s outstretched hand.

With Johnny and Lauren crowded in behind her, and Stanley still trying to get back on his feet Susan unlocked the shed and pushed the door. It swung in.

It was empty.

The panic rose in the Johnny’s chest like a bread roll rising in an oven, hot and uncomfortable. It only worsened as his eyes adjusted to the gloom and he realised that not only was the shed empty, but there was a four foot wide hole in the middle of the floor, blackly stretching down to beneath the earth.

“She digs,” The newly righted Stanley breathed hoarsely.

Lauren was the first to say anything constructive.

“Quick,” she ordered, calm, factual, no nonsense as ever, “We have to get back to the house. We’ll be safe the-”

There was a barely audible sound, like a movement of air and then a ruler being twanged. She stopped, face frozen in mid-practical expression.

Lauren toppled forward, garden trowel still shuddering in the back of her neck. Blood already seeping down onto her shoulders.

Johnny, Susan and Stanley paused for a moment, then screamed and ran for the back door.

It seemed much farther to run for Johnny than it had on the cautious shuffle outwards. He constantly glanced to his left - at Susan, and to his right, at Stanley as the three of them dashed for safety.

Susan seemed fine, accelerating… fitter than the two boys, she survived on a diet of salad sandwiches that kept her curvy. Johnny glanced left. Stanley was having trouble, lagging behind a little. It seemed his diet of bacon sandwiches and Cornish pasties weren’t the only thing catching up to him. He redoubled his effort, putting so much into the running that he didn’t notice the spade shearing through the air, edge first, towards his neck.

Stanley’s body tripped over its own feet in mid run, barrelling forward. His head landed in a nearby bed of petunias, eyes still screwed up in concentration.

Johnny still hadn’t seen the killer. She was just a blur, diving in and out of the soil so fast it was impossible to know where she was. Johnny glanced at Susan, they were getting close to the door now they just had to-

A hand burst up through the grass in front of him, grabbing Susan’s ankle. She fell hard, hitting her head on one of the stone slabs. Johnny cried and skidded to a halt, he meant to go back for Susan but he was stopped by an explosion of earth half way between them. The killer suddenly stood before him, legs astride the hole she had emerged from, the shovel from the garden shed gripped hard in hands. She stood defiant, ready to attack. Johnny got his first good look at the woman who had killed almost everyone in his life, everyone he’d cared for.

“She’s really… pretty.” was the overriding thought.

He couldn’t help it, she really was. Johnny felt a familiar tingling as her hair danced like jet black liquorice in the breeze, coming to rest occasionally upon coconut shoulders. He was transfixed by the way she bared her perfect teeth, her gorgeously freckly nose creasing up in wonderful aggression. Johnny marvelled at her lean athletic build as her shoulders angled down and well formed calves pushed perfectly plimsolled toes into the grass. Her hair now flying out behind her as she closed the gap, breasts swaying marvellously inside her tight blue top with every magnificent step she took towards him. Johnny swooned as she closed the gap between them in and an instant that seemed like a wonderful lifetime she bore him to the floor, beautiful soft body pressed close to his as she pushed the handle of the shovel into his windpipe in an effort to choke him.

Oh, how playfully they rolled and tumbled, Johnny trying to keep the pressure off his throat so he could enjoy this vision for just a moment longer. With one last valiant effort Johnny pushed the handle up with all his strength, causing just a moments respite. Enough time to crane his neck for one small, fleeting kiss on those beautiful lips. Oh, they tasted like the sweetest cake, the sprinkles of dirt mere hundreds and thousands atop the greatest desert he would ever know. Objective achieved, he lay back, satisfied, as the pressure increased and the air flow lessoned and the corners of his vision grew duller and duller until-

Susan hit the killer round the back of the head with a French loaf. The killer slid down to the ground next to him.

“Susan!?” Johnny choked, “What the hell did you do that for.”

His brain caught up with events.

“And…” he hesitated, “Where on earth did you get that French loaf from? And how could it even hurt her and…”

Johnny’s curiosity faded into silence as Susan began to tear hulking lumps from the bread and rub them all over her body, before inserting them slowly into her mouth and chewing with moans of pleasure. He stared, transfixed, until he felt the warm moisture of breath on the edge of his right ear.

“Johnny,” the killer’s rich velvety whisper rampaged through his body, “would you like to taste my baps?”

He hurriedly glanced right, to see the beautiful murderess suddenly reclining in a bikini on a mountain of rolls. He nodded dumbly. She giggled and tossed one to him.

Johnny bit in, hungrily. He was ravenous.

The girls fell upon him, there was bread everywhere. Rolls, buns, loaves, baguettes, croissants and more… more than anyone could ever try in a lifetime of baking.

He took a chunk out of one of Susan’s baguette‘s, then began forcing a whole loaf into his mouth in an orgy of baked goods. The girls laughed and began shredding pastries with their hands, dropping sweet strips into Johnny’s mouth.

Johnny laughed rapturously in reply, spraying crumbs all down his front. And he ate, and he munched, and he laughed and there was bread.

All he could see was bread, all he could feel was bread, all he could smell was bread, all he could taste was bread, all he could hear was an alarm… an alarm?

Johnny woke up with a start in bed. He was in a cold sweat. He reached out to turn his alarm off, it was a school day.

He looked down at his transformers duvet with fear. The taste still seemed to tingle in his mouth, he swallowed. Slowly, he began to peel back the covers. He knew what he would find there, it had happened before and would happen again. The teachers at the bakery college told him it happened to all young men of his age.

His pyjamas were covered in a galaxy of crumbs, spreading out to the undercovers. Some were already malting onto the bedroom carpet.

“Oh no, “ Johnny groaned, “I’ve had a bread dream!”

Johnny lay back slightly uncomfortably, and thought about how to get rid of the crumbs without his mum noticing.

Copyright © 20 February 2005 Sam Barker