from the dark street. The door reads as we hoped. Open. We stand with our arms by our sides. A deep breath, our fingers brush each other for comfort and assurance. Stand up straight. Look ahead. Act normal. We compose ourselves. I raise one hand and push the door. It does as the sign says it would. It opens, we enter.
The warmth hits us, caressing our faces and causing our hands to tingle. I hadn’t realised the chill in the night’s air until this proved there was one. The man behind the counter looks up at us, his face showing his thoughts clearly. He obviously doesn’t know what to make of the two forms that burst into his shop giggling hysterically. He’s chosen to keep one eye on us as we start to walk down the aisle. Sam walks ahead of me, as he does so he leans towards one of the shop’s customers and mutters, ‘Mmm, you taste nutritious.’
The man jumps, not expecting to be spoken to. He looks sharply at Sam then swings his attention to me briefly before looking back at Sam, who now stands before the shop’s Spawn collection, flicking his way forcefully through it on a search for nothing. I leave him to it and round a corner. Sam is soon to follow. It hits him as he does so.
I watch as he stops suddenly, stops as though he hit a brick wall. He makes a tentative step forward, crossing the line from normality to a higher plain. His eyes widen in awe, his face fills with intrigue. He exclaims a burst of air before saying ‘Look at all these colours.’
‘What?’
‘All these beautiful colours.’ His voice echoes dreamily across a brightened landscape which only he can see. He stands like a child in a chocolate factory, amazed by the wide assortment of pleasures and colours around him. He turns full circle, nothing more leaves his lips.
A change. A glow. A vivid red at the corner of my vision. I flick my eyes up to it. Normal. Slowly more colours blaze through, the curtain of reality being pulled open, its dulling presence fading to let in the true brightness of the world. My eyes roll in their sockets, looking around me without moving my body. The shop is gradually becoming a living rainbow, colours merging, fighting amongst themselves for dominance. Technicolor stars fighting to be the brightest in this galaxy, a galaxy to which Sam stands at its centre. A sun looking at its planets in astonishment. I reach out for him, my hand griping around his wrist. Slowly I walk and he follows, guiding our way through the maze of colour and out onto the dark street and its chill night air.
‘They’ve totally kicked in for you haven’t they?’ I ask. Silence the reply. ‘Sam? They’ve kicked in haven't they?’
Sam just stands there his face pressed up against the window, eyes blankly staring at all the comics. ‘I wanna go back in,’ he says finally.
‘You sure you’re gonna be okay in there? Like not do anything stupid?’
‘I wanna go back in.’
‘Yeah we will, but once I know that you’re okay.’
Sam turns and looks at me. ‘I love you.’ He smiles, as he does his eyes blaze with a glow of adventure. ‘Can we go back in?’
We do so. Re-entering. The man behind the counter looks at us again, his eyes suspicious. There’s something different about us, he can see it. His eyes say ‘trouble’ but I know that we’re existing on a different plain to him, seeing the world through different eyes. Once again he resigns to keeping his eye on us as we walk past.
We’re swimming in a sea of colour. Reds, blues, greens. I find myself in front of a line of comics. My hand reaches out and picks one up. As I read the cover, a thrill runs down my spine. I’d absently found the issue that up to this point has eluded me. I turn to Sam and he sees my glee.
‘Oh my god! It’s the one you wanted.’
‘I know. I’m gonna buy it.’ We head over to the counter and I place it down. The man watches suspiciously. I pull the money out of my wallet and hand it over, all the time Sam giggling behind me, fidgeting excitedly like a puppy waiting to go for a walk. The comic is bagged and handed back. Without a reason to be in here the shop has lost its interest, its living colours just the prelude for what is to come. I know that, Sam knows that. We turn. We leave.
The darkness outside is a sharp contrast to what we have just experienced. We walk and turn at the bottom of the street onto the main road. See a shop and are at once drawn to its bright glow, like moths to the moon. This light is harsh, clinical, its blue tint altering everything in its glare. We pick up two bottles of Coke and join the queue. We pay. Sam buys a packet of cigarettes, Marlboro Lights. We leave.
Twist, fizz, gulp. I down some of the Coke. Its coolness chills the inside of my throat. I feel it coat the tubes as it falls through into my stomach. Click, flame, inhale. The smoke from my cigarette flows through different bodily tubes, hitting my lungs, making them bleed. It feels good. I look at Sam. He’s smiling still, grinning constantly like the Cheshire Cat. Another drag on our cigarettes, followed by a question, ‘What do we do now?’
Sam looks at me and shrugs his shoulders. ‘I dunno. Shall we go back to mine, drop off our bags and then decide?’
‘That sounds like a plan.’ I drop the cigarette butt to the floor, stamp it out with my foot then take another swig from my bottle. Sam takes up his position next to me and we begin to walk towards the nearest tube station.
II
Colours everywhere, bright reds shining out in the enclosing gloom of this underground world. Rumbling, vibrating. The movement of life across the city. Giant mouse holes running beneath a cluttered landscape. We walk onto the platform, staying close to the walls, making sure the glowing yellow stripes along its edge don’t lure us like the blue of a fly killer. Yellow here is a warning; that we must remember.
We’re still giggling as we walk. Happiness a chemical explosion of venomous toxins. Stop, stand, wait. Each second a lifetime. All around us people swarm, on their way home, their own evening adventures just about to begin. Rumble, blast of air. Cold air rushing over us, whistling through our ears. A train stops at the platform. We climb in.
I see Sam narrow his eyes and feel mine do the same. The fluorescent brightness burning, a blazing glow raining giant drops of acid light along the carriage. We find a seat and sit. The doors close, the train judders into life, pulling us into the darkened unlit abyss between the stations.
‘Dom,’ whispers a voice next to me, followed by a nudge. It’s Sam. I look at him, and he nods towards the guy next to me, a smile wide on his face. I look. The guy’s arms are a forest of fur, long dark strands standing defiant across his skin, an army of hair allowing no flesh to be seen. The hair is growing, becoming thicker. I follow the arms up to his face. Thick masses of hair run down its side. His eyes, albeit staring forward, filled with an unnatural glow. His face is mutating, the mouth dislocating, moving forward, a muzzle forming before my very eyes.
I look back at Sam. He too is transfixed by the vision I see. ‘Is he a werewolf?’ I hear him whisper as I return my eyes back to look upon the morphing shape.
The ears are pointed, protruding out slightly from the hair. The fingers of his hand stretched, thick clumps of hair surrounding the knuckles. He remains still. Those unnatural eyes still transfixed upon the window, still gazing into the darkness beyond them.
‘I think he is,’ I whisper back at Sam. A werewolf tricked by the acid glow of artificial light.
The train shudders to a halt and we rise. The werewolf does the same. Towering over us, his clothes pulled taut by the alterations of his body. He moves, fluid movements. We follow, transfixed upon him. A werewolf in London. An unnatural beast walking under the capital city and its populous - too consumed by their own lives - fail to even give it a second glance. But we see it, following closely. It stops, lifts its snout into the air and sniffs. Looking around, a lick of its lips as it savours the taste of something in the air. Then it turns sharply and looks at us, eyes cold and calculating. I feel my blood freeze, we’ve been spotted. I feel Sam grip at my arm. The beast stands, watching, gl
ancing over at us. Then with movements as graceful as any wild animal it runs. Speeding into the distance without looking back, nimbly weaving in and out of the crowds, so nimble that no one stops to notice him as he passes. A silent predator escaping into the night.
We look around, confused for a moment. Our location and plans lost to us in the wake of werewolf boy. My eyes flick around me, surveying the scene, looking for clues that would give away our location. All around me masses of people, unidentifiable from each other. Their only noise is the sound of their hurried steps.
‘Where are we?’ Sam asks
I shrug my shoulders as a reply.
‘No seriously Dom, where are we?’
‘This is Euston.’ A disembodied voice echoes down the walkways. ‘This is Euston, Euston, Euston.’ The place name repeated, each one fainter than the previous.
Sam's eyes on me. ‘What the fuck?’ Confusion evident in his voice.
‘This is Euston.’ The voice slows down, its metallic tint compressing and rippling as it rushes over us. I look around. There’s a new feel to the place. The tunnel we’re stood in slopes slightly. Focus blurs, a quick zoom in followed by a quick zoom out. There’s a new noise around us. Like a swarm of wasps rising over the sound of footfalls. As people continue to walk in