There's Dazzle on the screen just before the cops come get him, then the camera closes in on his lovely pixellated face till it's filling the screen. Then the pixels start to pop one by one like bubbles and it's not his face underneath them, it's my face!
I look around at Dazzle, who's smiling, and at the others and nobody's saying anything especially not me until Flute asks, 'How the fuck did you do that, Melv?'
I look at Jackie, thinking she's behind it with her hi-tech wizardry but she just looks at me smiling and says, 'Not me, Melv. This is from the cop station, and the copy at the mall is the same, I checked.'
'The cops don't know what to do, Pixel!' shouts Spike, ruffling my hair.
'Cops don't know nothing about Pixel Face!' pipes up Matchstick, then they're all hugging me and slapping my back like I'm a hero, and you know what? I am a hero, I am a fucking hero!
Anyway that's how it happened, I swear. That's how I got my new name, and that's how Dazzle donated me his Boomerang 509 like for ever and that's how I became a full-time member of the Hang 5ers, except that now we're called the Pixelkids. And I don't care if you cops don't believe me because that's what happened and I can't explain it and I don't even want to.
STIGMATICA
Flute wasn't your usual low-level partaker, no cheap and greedy half-incher she. Sure, she could turn on the hard-luck fairytale bollocks when cop-cornered, how she'd been a test-tube baby for instance, and had never known a good home that wasn't made of glass, so was it any wonder she was always throwing stones? Never known no father, except for some wayward fridge specimen. Her mum was nouveau lesbian with hetero latents, and posh with it, well able to afford the very best in frozen goods, so there must have been a mix-up at the Spurm-U-Want, don't you think? Must have been some nasty in there, how else explain her criminal tendencies?
These were the kinds of tales that Flute could tell with her mouth closed, and the look in her eyes said you better believe it, baby, or else you'll get this here in your gob, comprendez? Yes, we see.
She'd tried to go straight a few times, just to prove how good at heart she was, once when eight, once when nine, one final time at the age of eleven. But then she'd come on, and nicked her very first pack of tampons, which kinda sealed the life of her, stained her pocketbook, so to speak. A dark streak of blood, set loose.
The next day she ran away and by the age of fourteen she was known all over as the best of her kind. All the estate boys, both good and bad, were happy to hang around. No deal. Flute was saving herself for Dazzle, some crazy kid. Some crazy kid on holiday, enjoying His Majesty's Youth Adventure Camp, and hoping to get out in a month or so for good behaviour. Until then, Flute would keep the faith, steal the day, thieve the night, purloin the moon. Whatever it took, she took. Without consent.
Always one step ahead of the cops, always on the next but one adventure of a life gone bad.
One time - July this was, last year - Flute stole a camera off a woman in a cafe. It wasn't much of a steal, skills-wise, because the woman was mostly to blame, just leaving her bag like that, unattended, and too busy stuffing her face to notice.
Back in the hiding place, Flute did the once over. Slim pickings really, and not much of a thing to look at; small but snazzy in its add-ons, and worth a minute's work, I suppose. Some film inside it. There was a little light on one side, which glowed yellow. Just for a laugh, Flute pointed the camera at the burned-out biscuit factory in the distance, waited for auto-focus, released the shutter.
Click!
That simple.
She panicked some then, with this mad fantasy that a cop would work out her hiding place from the exact angles of the shot taken. So she ripped the film out, exposed it. Didn't even notice, so busy with the paranoia, that the light on the side was now a deep, pulsing red.
The next day was market day, so Flute was visiting Crabtree, with a stockpile of items she'd been building up in the last week or so. Crabtree was a discerning bastard for someone so far down the feeding scale; he was only interested in prime items, stuff he could sell within a day or two. Flute wished she could get hold of his contacts, maybe get into the fencing business herself one day. Oh, she was a girl with ambition, no doubt about that. So, he took the videocam gladly, and the mountain bike; the motherboard and chips would be difficult, because they were slow as fuck since last month's update, but Flute accepted a knockdown for them. They did the business, and the last thing on the table was the snazzy camera.
Flute wasn't expecting much, enough to bump the margin up to the next level, that was all.
Crabtree wouldn't touch it.
I mean, he literally wouldn't touch it, backing away from the table like the thing was on fire. Flute asked him what was wrong. He wouldn't say, he just pointed out the little flashing red light, told her to get the fuck out of his place of work.
That night, Flute was feeling pretty pissed off, and she didn't know why. The rest of the stuff she unloaded to further fences, even further down the line. None would touch the camera; none would say why.
She woke up in the middle of a bad dream, covered in a sweat. Was she coming down with the fever? Stumbling to the bathroom for a drink of water, her eyes in the mirror, bloodshot. Her hands shaking to turn on the taps, to wet her face.
With a gasp she stepped back from the sink, out of its halo of light. And then forwards again, first one hand, then the other, both hands back into the light as though disembodied. The hands of a ghost, pale and spectral. And on each wrist a stain of red, a small stain.
She woke, thinking it just a dream. Brought her hands up, from under the covers.
The stain had spread.
Washed and washed, she did, but the stain remained, covering her wrists now and creeping down to her palms, and on the back of the hand also, creeping down. Washed and scrubbed, and scrubbed and washed.
The stain crept on.
She wore gloves that day, and for the rest of the week, and not just to keep her fingerprints to herself. She thought a little about seeing a doctor, but Flute didn't have one, and never would, most probably. A doctor was authority, a kind of cop in a way, a body cop. It wasn't her fashion. Instead, she went back to visit Crabtree. It was market day come round once more, but this time no loot for sale, only an answer desired.
She took off the gloves, one after the other, peeling them
slow to reduce the pain. And when she held up her hands, for
Crabtree to see, he took in a long sharp breath. For the whole
• of her hands, both hands, wrists to fingertips, were burning a
bright scarlet red.
Crabtree told her to keep her distance, not even to think about touching him, or any of his property.
'What is it?' she asked, with the fear in her voice.
'Don't know how it works, not yet. We're working on it.'
'But what can I do?'
'Should've noticed that little yellow light. Didn't you notice that little yellow light?'
'I saw it.'
'Should've known what it was. Don't you keep up?'