Solution

Nick eased Ryan down onto his bed and drew the mixed heap of blankets over him. Ryan shivered beneath them, despite it being summertime.

Nick sat down heavily into the only chair in the room, which faced the bed in its lonely vigil, having no company except the old collection of magazines that were heaped around it, their features bland and tedious, stained and tattered, as familiar to see as they were uncomfortable underfoot. Congregated around the room was a host of stinking towels, bottles, cans, dirty clothes and other soiled mess across the floor that had accumulated with time in the sordid, smelling dark.

He watched as Ryan rolled his head from side to side and moaned, lost in the distant, private hell of his delirium before he settled back to the steady wheezing and croaking of before.

The topmost of Ryan's covers was a child's duvet, brightly decorated with a pattern of cartoon animals. Nick regarded it dully for a while before he pulled a plain blanket over it. The child's duvet seemed so wrong next to his friend's sunken, pallid face where the skin was dead and dry, like flaking paint, and the desiccated lips were drawn back over his teeth.

He didn't even feel embarrassment when he helped Ryan use the bedpan any more. He did it out of sheer routine as though he was sleepwalking. This wasn't as unsettling as how much blood Ryan left behind in the bowl.

The room's only light was a narrow slice of the sun's glare that shone cold and bright through a crack between the curtain and blinds. It cut a line through the dim little room that hid the pair of them from the world.

Nick snatched the first magazine from by his feet and held it to the light as he aimlessly turned its pages.

It was filled with stories and articles, pages full of tired old words that barely made sense any more, pages read so many times that his eyes would skip over whole passages of bland, senseless words without seeming to focus. His eyes skimmed over paragraph after paragraph, page after page of improbable, tall tales of gossip and tabloid articles. Far-fetched and exaggerated, there were stories about extraordinary things that happened to ordinary people or ordinary things that happened to celebrities. He browsed these and the blank stares and forced smiles in the glossy, vividly coloured pictures without taking any of it in.

They were stories about the wider world outside this place but it was the pictures of bright, living people that accompanied them that Nick's gaze lingered on as he dragged his sore eyes across each page. Each glowing complexion, each shining set of eyes of these vibrant, smiling people, they were living, breathing, captured in that moment. The strange, unenviable little dramas of their lives were laid out in simple, artless prose for the voyeuristic pleasure of anyone who would care to look. They were melodramatic and doubtless exaggerated, if not complete fiction, but you knew this sort of people were out there somewhere. Maybe you knew of them, maybe you could relate to them. All the sordid details were peeled apart and exposed for all to see in a wonderful, gross invasion of their privacy.

It was a link to the outside world, a living world far away from here and just for a while Nick wasn't there in that room, in the cloying, morbid stench of the real and the dying, and that was the point.

Ryan rolled his head from side to side and hacked wretchedly. It brought Nick back to Earth and he threw the magazine away.

'God damn it, Ryan, how long are you going to keep this up?' Nick muttered at the ceiling. Through the gloom he could see the whites of Ryan's eyes roll around in their sockets, and how emaciation turned them dull and glassy.

'Easy now, easy,' Nick murmured, as he placed a hand over Ryan's shoulder. 'Go easy now.' Nick soothed him back down but couldn't keep a pleading edge from his voice.

He decided to stay for a while longer, so he sat and listened to Ryan's dry, crackling wheezes. Something sinister and pernicious rumbled deep beneath them.

He wanted to talk to Ryan, maybe say something comforting – isn't that what people do? – but he couldn't think what. One-sided conversation withered when there was never anything different or anything new to say because nothing new ever happened. There was the same routine, the same actions and thoughts, inescapable and on a loop, repetitive, tired, as familiar as the magazines, the bottles, the mess, the smell. There were no promises or reassurances to make. He couldn't say things would be okay or that he would get better.

Enough of this. Nick's fingers trembled but moved automatically, as though from practice, as he smoothed out a spliff from his shirt pocket. 'Sod it, I can't think of a good reason why not any more, it might even help with the stink of this place.'

Nick plucked a nearly empty glass from the accumulation of bottles and cans on the bedside table that spilled into the open drawer to hold any junk that the table top couldn't. It would do as an ashtray.

A tobacco pouch was knocked to the floor and scattered its contents. 'God's sake. Maybe I should clear this out sometime, it's gone rotten,' Nick mumbled in Ryan's direction with the joint between his lips as he felt for a lighter. 'How did this all get here? I can't remember half of it. It's got to be mine, I've hardly seen anyone else. '

The smoke was merciful as Nick breathed it out. He heard the thump of footsteps up through the ceiling, the muffled sound of voices and a distant hum and buzz of music.

'I know I never light up here for your sake, but surely now it doesn't matter any more. Maybe it might even make it easier. For you I mean.' 

Ryan wheezed and whispered something Nick couldn't make out. He closed his eyes and waited for the narcotic rush to pick him up. He sat, smoked and looked at nothing as his breathing slowed and grew deeper. The pungent, thick smoke pressed ghostly lips to his and breathed life into his lungs.

'Back in the early days, some of the girls sat and in my place, and I couldn't understand it all. I couldn't understand your decision. I shouted at you and demanded you snap out of it and get back up. You were letting yourself get sick and giving up. I didn't get it. You numbly lay through it all and pulled the sheet over your head. Maybe now I understand. When it was clear that you were ill, that this bed would be your last, I insisted that I was the only one to care for you. As a friend, what else could I do?'

'"I didn't know they were that close. Ryan never said so, anyway." "They were never such good friends until Ryan got sick." Those were rumours I overheard. They made me angry.

'"He doesn't want other people to see Ryan like this," "He doesn't want people to see how he got this way" were others, but these were true.'

Nick drew in from the spliff. There were things he wanted to say, unspoken words that had built up over the time he'd locked himself away here. 

He knew there wasn't long left to say them, a feeling that grew each time he was indecisive, hesitated, then bottled it before he retreated back to his own room, tired and alone, where the odour would follow him until he drowned it in smoke. He always hated himself for it. Frankly, Nick didn't know quite what it was he wanted to say or how to go about it – some kind of send-off perhaps. A lonely, quiet elegy for his friend, an epitaph, anything – a goodbye. Nick hoped the drug in his spliff would pick him up and make words flow more than dry sobriety would allow. Nick knew that he owed it to his best friend to say his piece or he would forever hate himself for never doing so.

He held the smoke in his throat, then breathed out before he spoke aloud.

'The others whisper things they won't speak out loud because they're too terrible to say. "There's not long," they say. "It will soon be his time to go." I hate to admit it, but I think they're right. I didn't want to accept it at first because I didn't understand, but now I think I do.

'You couldn't accept that all that was different, how we were different, and the way things had changed. You got sick and let it happen because if there was one more person this world changed, one more person it claimed, it wouldn't be you. You wouldn't end it, or fight it. You would just let it slip away. I didn't understand at first, and I'm sorry for that, but I get it now.'

Nick fell silent, and there was only the hiss of burning and the orange glow of the spliff as he smoked. The music track changed upstairs and Ryan turned and moaned something incoherent in his bed. Maybe it was in response to what Nick was saying, if he could even hear it. Maybe it was the second-hand smoke of the Herb, or the sickness that had set in after he'd quit it. No one brought any of the Herb into that dark little room out of respect for Ryan's wishes. Surely now it wouldn't matter.

'Some say we've changed, we're not the same as we used to be,' Nick murmured, and he touched his fingertips to the skin on the back of his hand. It felt cool and numb. 'Maybe it's our Herb – the Bhuna. If we go without it we feel sick, but when we smoke it we feel more alive than ever. At least now you've shown us what happens if we quit. I don't know if the others make the connection. I don't know if they should even be allowed to, should they panic when they realise how dependent we are.

'I think about it. A lot. As one of them that grew it with you and introduced it to the others, I've got to wonder what we're responsible for. How were we to know? Now we need it to feel normal. It's a dream crashing down. I wish we still had you and your advice.'

'If anyone were to think you were weak for choosing this way then they would be wrong. You showed willpower, a determination stronger than withdrawal and hunger when you made your decision and actually went through with it. You're something we're not and you leave us here alone, as always, in wonder at you.'

Nick drew in another breath and sat forward in his chair. The cut of sunlight illuminated a slice of him in the gloom. He was tall and thin, his dark hair in a long fringe, and he had angular, almost feline features. Tiger stripes were daubed down his cheeks like war paint and his eyes overshadowed in crimson streaks, eyes that had dilated pupils and a deadened, bloodshot depth from a lack of sleep. Nick wore a platinum chain around his neck and three gleaming watches on the same wrist but none of them told the same time. He blew across the top of the spliff to make it glow and flicked off a crust of ash.

The corners of Nick's mouth twitched in the smile of regretful memory.

'It's the little things I like to remember,' he finally said to Ryan. 'Like the time we met you by chance on the way back from rugby practice. A beautiful, sunny day, and you were there wearing that cheesy tracksuit that we loved to make fun of. We decided to go down to that bar we like so much, The Depot, and it turned out to be my favourite time of us all together.

'You jumped on me and demanded a piggyback, and I laughed and staggered under your weight but carried you all the way down the road as you gave high-fives to other students passing by. You were always good at that. You bumped into people you'd never seen before, met as strangers and left as friends.

We stopped at the newsagent's for a snack, and I remember the big grin and wink you gave me as you slipped chocolate bars into Jack's pockets without him noticing. Outside, you fished them out, stuffed your face and thanked him, saying "mmm". The look on his face was priceless when he realised he'd stolen things for you, again, for about the tenth time in a row. He never learned.

 'At the bar we drank beer straight from pitchers, and you started up rugby club drinking songs we all knew by heart and sang together. You drank and sang until you forgot the words and started to make up your own rude ones for everyone's amusement until we got asked to leave. That was another talent you had – you always made us laugh. And got us kicked out of places, but it was the best.

'Then there was my favourite bit. Suzie, with the funny accent, another absolute stunner – I don't know where you kept finding them, you never let me know – anyway, she said she was embarrassed and told you off. She tried to march off and leave us but found she couldn't move because you were holding the back of her belt. She was stuck there, whining at you, flapping, struggling and getting more high-pitched until she fell over. God, it just hurt to laugh by then.'

Nick shifted gear, and his smile dropped. 'Then there was the time when Mum died.' He took a drag from the spliff. 'I was in a mess for days, but you took me for a night out on the town, just the two of us. You showed me the Bhuna, and we smoked it for the first time before we went.

'It was amazing. I suppose it did a good job of cheering me up. After I was in a fit state to get dressed, I said I couldn't go out because I was flat broke, but you said it was okay because you had a plan. "This is a one-off," you said. "Don't try this trick again, but when you do, don't tell anyone I taught you it." I was confused but went along.

'We went into the first bar we saw, a pretentious bar full of wankers on the main street, and ordered a couple of shots. "We can't afford it here," I said. "What are we doing, and what's this trick you told me about?" You just grinned, and when the shots arrived you ordered a pint of some poncey craft ale from the far end of the bar. I was confused – "What's the big idea?" I said. "We definitely can't afford that!" You said shut up and pound the shots. While the bartender was off to pour the drink, you grabbed me by the arm and whisked me out the door without paying. Off we went to the next bar, and then the next and did the exact same thing! Oh my God, I couldn't believe it, it was so scummy. Now I know how Jack felt. We went and did the same stunt in every consecutive bar in Huddersfield town centre until we lay laughing and absolutely hammered on our backs in the church flower-bed.

Nick laughed. 'That was such a dirty trick, but it was a thrill and it put a smile on my face when I needed it most.

You said that as far as stealing shots and chocolate bars were concerned, it was just big corporations losing a few pennies. No one actually got hurt by it. The mark-up the bars sold their short-measured booze would shock you anyway. Also, if the bartenders had any sense they would drink the pint they were left with on the sly instead of chucking it. I've got to hand it to you, that's a unique way of thinking about things. Absolute scoundrel. I never met anyone quite like you.'

Nick paused. 'Then you listened to me for hours as I rambled on in tears about what it was like now Mum had died. You listened with absolute patience' – Nick's words choked him up – 'and never interrupted the whole time. You were the only one who was there for me. I don't think I ever told you how much it all meant.'

The thickly packed joint took its effect on Nick. Swaying, he brushed his fingers through Ryan's blond hair and looked at how some of it came away in his hand. 'Your golden crown is slipping, you dying king,' he remarked sombrely. 'Its filaments stick to my fingers. I wish I had a crown like yours… You were the best of us, someone who had everything we all wanted, and that strength – the strength to let it all slip away. We remaining few are lost. We have no direction. Everyone has ideas, sure, everyone has ideas, of what we should do, and I have no faith in any of them. You held us together. You were a leader to us all even if no one would admit it. I want to be like that, like you…'

Ryan's mouth had been moving silently open and shut. The music hummed away upstairs and there was the muted sound of voices. It only made the silence in the room seem lonelier.

Ryan started talking again, a mumbled, feverish monologue that made no sense. By now, the old Ryan had gone and left this shadow, this horrible mockery, behind. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' Ryan said to the ceiling, or 'Oh God, what have we done? Why are we here, this can't be happening.'

Nick couldn't bear to hear it. He got up and went outside for a while, where he could watch the sky and finish his spliff by himself with a much-needed drink.

When Nick came back after an hour or so, Ryan was dead. His dull, unblinking eyes looked up at the ceiling and pinkish saliva had dried on his teeth. Nick stood and looked at him for some time with an unreadable expression on his face. Maybe he breathed a little harder due to his emotion, but at the end his face twisted in fierce rage as he left the room and went to the next one. There was something he'd been meaning to do.

The next room was once a party room in the house the friends occupied but had been abandoned in favour of the next flat that used to belong to Ryan's neighbours. At some point, someone taped cardboard over the window to shut out the sun. The only light came from clusters of electric torches that hung from the ceiling by lengths of wire. They had bits of coloured acetate stuck to their bulbs, causing them to glow myriad hues of unearthly blue, pink, green and purple as their batteries discharged at different rates. Nick scowled and strained to see.

The walls were covered in glow in the dark silly string, much of which had dried out and peeled away by now. They were also covered in graffiti, paintings, splashes of colour, hieroglyphics and doodles. There were sketches and abstract fractals that intertwined, tessellated and branched organically across every surface, all drawn in the creative frenzy of the Bhuna Herb. Bank notes were hung in garlands from the ceiling, glued together in long spider's web-like streamers. Denominations from five pounds to fifty were dyed every colour of the rainbow and were weaved around the room in a vibrant canopy.

The floor, chairs and table were covered in bottles, cans, dirty plates, ashtrays, spilt tobacco and playing cards, soaked and stuck to the tables in sticky old booze. It seemed the others also liked to sit there, paint their hands and then stamp them all over the place. There were crowds of them scattered about the room in a vast ovation of long-silent, multicoloured handclaps. It was vivid, like a migraine.

Nick was sure the thing he sought was somewhere underneath it all, so he kept looking as he tripped on things and flipped over chairs in his frustration.

Eventually he found it, a metal dumbbell, dusty and sticky under a fashionable brand-name coat that had been flung into the corner and forgotten. With quick, aggressive movements, Nick unscrewed the weight from one side and weighed the rest in his hand. It would do. Taking a tough pair of gardening gloves from a filthy stack at the back door, he left via the side alley to the main road and re-locked the iron gate behind him.

Outside on the street, Nick squinted through the sun's glare. He tore off his expensive print t-shirt, bunched it around his fist and looked at his reflection in what remained of a nearby shop window. His chest hair was shaved off, his shoulders striped in tribal tattoos and a blue Chinese dragon wound its way down the left side of his ribs, its head coiled around a nipple. Nick hoped he still remained lean and athletic-looking, but could see how pale and thin he had become. 

Nothing moved on the street. There were no birds, nor the faintest sound of a car, nor the drone of an aeroplane overhead. There was no movement except the gusts of wind that hissed through the hedges and trees. These days it swept up a lot of grey dust, along with the dead leaves, and it all collected on the cars, windows and the mortar between house bricks.

Nick held the dumbbell like a hammer and strode down the middle of the street. He turned to cut across one silent neighbourhood after another, aimlessly zigzagging from one direction to the next around the residential area of town but found nothing. The streets were empty.

It was agonising how ordinary everything appeared. A makeshift sign said 'No Parking', written in a hand no longer living for eyes no longer around to see it. Cars had stickers and badges that proclaimed allegiance to a football team, belief or political cause that no longer existed. Road signs marked speed limits, traffic instructions or directions when there were no drivers or laws, no one to enforce them. Everything was frozen in time the same it ever was, apart from the humming, whipping wind, which was stronger now, the grey dust and the awful stillness.

'Come on then, where are you?' Nick clashed his dumbbell against a lamppost. The noise was loud, shocking, and he froze, alert, as it echoed and he watched for any reaction.

There was none. At the next lamppost he raised the dumbbell but hesitated. It felt like a transgression, some kind of wrongdoing, to hit it and break the silence. It was like walking over a grave. Nick fought the impulse to turn back home to safety as he lost steam and doubted what he was doing.

'Coward! Pathetic!' he hissed at himself. 'What did you come here to do?'

He loosed a wordless shout of hurt and frustration. He berated himself. 'Are you so weak? Would you rather be another victim? How can you be a leader to anyone if you can't even do something yourself?'

Nick struck off a car's wing mirror and smashed its window. His voice rose to a shout. 'I'm not going to sit by in that dump with the others, dig my grave and wait for the end to come. I'm going to be the one they listen to, the one who breaks us out of this. We won't go the same way as Ryan and I won't live in fear!' 

He jumped on to the next car's bonnet and bludgeoned the windscreen into a thousand spider's webs. 'We'll rule this place. We'll take it all and make it ours, and we won't live in fear…' 

Nick hopped down to strike the next lamppost, then the one after that, even louder, more aggressively.

 A grey-skinned, big-bellied and bloated man lumbered out from behind a truck.

Nick froze and, now acutely alone, breathed harder in terror. 'Won't live in fear,' he repeated, and his eyes roved over the detail of the figure in front of him.

The man's skin was mottled black and blue and laced with dark veins where it wasn't a bloodless ashen colour. Putrid stains matted a woollen jumper that, like his trousers, was torn, sodden and ringed by crusted sediment where damp had spread and dried across it.

Both of them stood and stared at each other. Nick was transfixed by the sight of the corpse-like man whose dim, mucoid eyes rolled and looked straight back at him through cracked and grimy spectacles.

The dumbbell seemed heavy and clumsy. The arms that held it now felt thin and frail. Nick raised the awkward, inadequate weapon and stood ready as the corpse-like man shifted from foot to foot, becoming agitated, and started to emit a low, horrible moan that built up from deep inside the foetid cavern of his chest.

Nick stood in a fighting stance and slowly edged forward, the inside of his gloves clammy and damp. He could smell the man's thickly pungent stench.

 'Come on, come on' Nick repeated under his breath. The grey man stared at him, still pacing side to side in agitation. He raised his arms up, ready to grab for him as he groaned and sputtered a wordless curse through dirty yellow teeth where the withered lips had shrunken back. 

There was something so hideously wrong and unnatural seeing the figure before him, walking and moving when it looked like it should be lying still and stiff in a coffin or on a mortuary slab. The close-up detail of the creature in front of him, with its once-living, feeling skin, how it styled its hair and the clothes it wore, made it seem so human. It made the thought of striking this once-living person physically repulsive. Nick's it seemed that it didn't matter how much you prepared, how fired up you got, when you came face to face with one of the ghoulish residents of the town, you would always feel fear.

The man lunged. Nick backed off as the bloated claws swiped the air at him. The purple, swollen fingers of each hand were rigid and hard as they whipped through the air, trying to grab at him and clamp down.

Nick tried to grab at one of the dead man's arms with his left hand but the man kept coming at him and swinging. The movement made it too hard to land a strike back. Nick kept missing and grew frantic. One swipe clipped his forearm, and the cold, hard flesh smacked painfully against him. Nick swung his dumbbell but it only glanced off the man's shoulder and he didn't even seem to notice.

Nick misjudged his step and stumbled. The man's club-like fist pounded into his ribs. Another dealt him a strike to the shoulder and neck that brought him to his knees. Nick yelled and flailed with his weapon. He hit the man across the forearm, a weak hit with little power, but he was sure it broke a bone. The man didn't react. He kept on coming and swung at Nick to land blows that Nick certainly did feel.

The man tried to bite him and the filthy jaws snapped so close Nick could feel the rank breath on his face.

Nick scrambled up and ducked under a powerful swing that would surely have knocked senseless. A swift kick to the man's chest made him step back, but by sheer reflex Nick raised his arm to block a strike and the man's thick fingers gripped down hard on his wrist, painfully hard, and twisted. It made Nick's knees buckle and he panicked and swung the dumbbell at the man's head several times in desperation, but the dead-man's grip of the growling, spitting man brought him to his knees and the dumbbell sliced through thin air.

The weapon slipped from Nick's fingers and clattered to the ground. Nick was forced down on his back and tried to kick up at the man's head and chest to block the clubbing he was receiving from the man's other hand on his shins and chest and side.

The man reached to bite him again, and with a desperate grab, Nick's fingertips brushed against his weapon. He snatched at it and swung it up at the man's temple. It impacted heavily and knocked the man onto his side. Nick kicked up from the floor and brought the weapon down again onto the man's bald skull as his other arm was being ground in a crushing, vice-like grip. Nick struck out, the sound of each dumbbell impact smacked back from the silent rows of houses and dark blood splattered up at him.

The man convulsed and kicked, boots drumming against the pavement but still wouldn't release his grip. Nick hit the man until he was sure he would never move again. He still had to twist, curse and struggle as he worked his fingers down into the purple claw that was locked around him until he could wrench it free. He held it tight and swore.

Nick looked at what he had done. It was brutish, ugly and messy. After everything he'd built it up to be, it now seemed so stupid and insignificant.

The dumbbell rang out as it struck the floor. Nick leant against a car on trembling, wet hands. The car's surface reflected the cold blue sky and the relentless glare of the sun.

'Oh God,' he repeated several times. Ryan's words came back to him: 'Why am I here? This can't be happening.' He repeated them himself now as the world spun and panic set in.

Nick pulled a foil packet from his trousers and took out a brown tobacco blunt, thickly packed with the Herb. He struggled to light it in the breeze, but when it did catch light, he dragged hard with the intention of getting as high as he could, not just fired up like before. The Bhuna pulled him up roughly and levelled his feelings out. The panicked thoughts passed him by like they were someone else's, far away. This is some damn good stuff, was the only thought that languidly entered his mind. Dazed, his wide eyes rolled in their sockets and, with his back to the car, he slid to the pavement.

After he sat there limply, looking at the body for a while, Nick thought he saw movement at the end of the road. Maybe it was more of the town's residents or his blurring vision, he couldn't tell. He scrabbled at the pavement for his things.

Nick wanted to say something to the body before he left. It would be something meaningful. A proclamation of triumph, a declaration of war, a promise that things had just begun, perhaps, but Nick couldn't think what that something should be. It was more like he was just leaving a sad, ugly mess behind him on the pavement, it seemed.

'Fuck you,' Nick said to the corpse and stumbled away.

Arriving back, Nick walked into Sarah, Jenny and Emily on the other side of the alleyway with the iron gate and gave them a fright. The girls had drinks and were on their way out to the gardens. Like Nick, they also had painted faces, but opted for something prettier than his war paint.

They stopped and stared at Nick, still topless and flecked with blood, with bruises that had begun to darken his skin. He had his t-shirt bunched around one fist and the bloodied dumbbell held in the other. They seemed to sway like they were at sea, in a world that spun and shifted.

'My God, look at the state of you! Where the hell have you been?' Sarah demanded in a schoolteacher-like tone. 'Sorry if I'm wrong, but I thought we all agreed on a few things! Firstly, that we don't go out on our own, and if we ever do go out – as a group – we at least wear something to protect ourselves, not go half-fucking-naked! And also' – Sarah changed gear as she turned to shout and gesture angrily, a finger stabbing the air at him – 'we don't go out high off our face, blatantly looking for fights and trying to get ourselves killed!'

Jenny and Emily remained watchful, nervous and silent at Sarah's side as she yelled. They eyed Nick's bare and blood-spattered skin as he stood there, grim and unsteady. The harsh noise that Sarah made faded out of Nick's attention as his pupils languidly swam towards Jenny, who seemed so pretty, so distant. Her image irresistibly drew his gaze, her face a smooth, heart-shaped glow in the blur, so different from the gloom and sickness of Ryan's bedroom. Right then, all he wanted was to touch that soft, heart-shaped face and hold her close to him. Nick tried to read her expression, which was mixed at best. Sarah was still making her noise in the background. Nick was unmoved.

'Ryan's dead,' said Nick, and he went to climb the stairway to his flat. The girls quickly moved out of his way and Sarah went silent.

In the bathroom of Ryan's flat was the top of an electric lamp, disembodied from its stand and nailed to the wall. It swung about when Nick connected the loose wires to a 9-volt battery. Next to it, among the unspeakable mess on the bathroom floor, was a large collection of wine and spirit bottles, all filled with off-colour and cloudy stream water with mismatched caps from when they were refilled.

Nick slammed the door behind him and stripped. He flung his clothes away, desperate to get them off. He leaned on the sink and stared at himself in the mirror. The image swam and shifted in the dark like someone else was looking back, someone he scarcely recognised, with a skull-like face that had been dragged for a month through hell and a body that seemed more skeletal than before. Nick tried to flex his muscles. They were nothing like Ryan's used to be. He also didn't have to stoop down to see his reflection like Ryan used to, either. Was this someone smart, capable, in control? Was this even someone who could look after themselves, never mind make a difference in the world?

'He's dead. He's actually dead,' Nick murmured. 'I knew it was coming, but now, now it's actually happened it seems… empty. The end of an era.' There was only stillness in the room, quiet, and the mumble of voices outside.

Nick looked down at his skinny arms that supported him on the sink. It was strange. In the dim light it looked like the freckles on his skin had multiplied and some of the veins on his forearms had grown dark, like those of the dead man. When he rubbed at them they smeared and left rusty brown streaks behind. He didn't understand. He furrowed his brow, licked his finger and rubbed away before he realised that it was the foul, toxic blood of the man he'd just battered in the street.

Nick spat and groaned with repulsion. He sprayed saliva and rubbed harder with his clammy palms but the marks only smeared and wouldn't come off. The more he twisted his arms and turned them so he could see them, the more the marks seemed to spread across him, growing and flourishing in clusters and sick constellations over his skin. They were all over him. Not thinking straight, Nick began to hyperventilate as panic set in once again.

He got into the bath, lay down, and fumbled with a bottle from the collection. His fingers slipped, and he couldn't get a grip on the lid before he realised it was already open. He poured the contents over himself. The chill of the liquid made him gasp as he tried to wash away the filth and the clammy feeling of guilt that sank into his skin.

A stink filled Nick's nose and his eyes stung. It wasn't water he poured over himself, but an old, sour bottle of white wine. He gagged, clawed the vile, burning liquid from his eyes and spat. After slipping and flailing in the tub, he managed to grab another two bottles and upended them over his head. The water chugged and sputtered from the old whisky and champagne bottles. It didn't touch the revolting, clammy feeling but it sluiced away the muck that covered him, the stinking alcohol, the sweat, the cloying mask of face paint and the blood. It all ran off him in darkly multicoloured streaks down the plughole, and left Nick lying there, soaked, shivering and vulnerable.

Nick hid his face in his hands. His shoulders began to shake. He sniffed and his breath came in heaves as the insanity of it all came crashing down all at once. He tried to push away at the empty bottles that nuzzled up to him in the tub and to stifle any sound he made into the crook of his elbow, because nothing could be worse than anyone hearing him right now. Nick peeled the collection of expensive watches off his wrist and flung them away across the floor in a sudden rage, unable to bear them against his skin.

After a while, Nick scrubbed himself raw with someone's towel – he didn't care whose – and re-dressed in clean clothes he found in a carrier bag, ripping the labels off first.

He went to Ryan's room. The door was open and he heard voices in there. Word had spread fast, and everyone was gathered by Ryan's bed. Sarah, Katie and Emily were there along with Jane, Jenny and Emma at the bedside. They held each other, murmured and wept softly. The curtains were drawn back, the window was wide open and the air was thick with air freshener.

Andy, Matt, Jack, Tom and Joe stood at the back. They watched Ryan, who seemed pallid and waxy-looking. His body was lying so still. It didn't look real, more like a plaster cast than the person they used to know. Someone had closed his eyes.

As Nick entered, people looked round at him and eyed him apprehensively. Maybe they heard about him and his venture. Good. He wanted them to know. Right now though, he wished he had some way to conceal how fragile he felt.

'He was so strong,' said Sarah, in tears. 'But Suzie's death hit him hard. He broke down because he loved her, and then after everything… he just cared too much and that took him down.' Sarah broke off and cried into her hands as Emily and Katie hugged her. That was an interesting interpretation of events, Nick thought.

'We should have done something. There must have been something we could have done, something we could have said. Maybe we could have changed his mind while we still had time,' said Andy.

'We tried everything,' said Jane. 'I still can't believe he would just give up. I don't understand.'

'I always thought he would pull through and get better,' Emma said. 'Oh why, Ryan? Why?'

'Look at the state of him! And the state of this place! It's a mess! No one else was allowed to get near him for so long. What the hell have you been doing in here? Why didn't you stop him?' Matt demanded.

'And what the hell was I supposed to do – just leave him? You think I didn't try to help?' Nick raged.

'Nick did what he could,' Tom said. 'Nick did everything he could to help make him more comfortable, but Ryan was sick.'

'That's not fair, Matt. Nick has been here looking after him for so long,' said Jenny. 'We all tried to help Ryan but there was nothing we could do.'

They stood in silence for a time and a spliff made its way round, smouldering like funeral incense.

'Well, if this is what swearing off the Herb does to you then maybe we should keep smoking. It would be better for our health!' Jack quipped. Every set of teeth in the room clenched against the words "Shut up, Jack!"

Nick chose his time, took a deep breath, and said what he'd thought up over the last few days.

'We've been trapped in here too long. We need to get out and do something together. Ryan wouldn't want us to sit around and grieve. He would want us to go on and live. We should go out and have a party in his honour, a big one, something to do him proud.'

No one responded. They stood and looked at Ryan's body.

Nick tried again. 'Rotting away in the dark like this can't be good for us. I mean, look at us. We're shut in here, miserable and letting ourselves go. We just hide in here and feel useless with nothing to make any effort for… doesn't it feel too close, too claustrophobic? It's like a prison. We should get out there and do something. Let's spread our wings.'

'Can you just shut up, Nick. I think we need some quiet right now,' said Sarah.

This only riled Nick and spurred him on. 'We can get ourselves dressed up, look all nice and presentable and go out and do something as a group. We all deserve a break after everything that's happened.' He tried to sound brighter and more encouraging. He didn't feel bright and encouraging. He felt like shit.

'Maybe people wouldn't feel useless with nothing to make an effort for if we actually got together and did something productive for a change,' Matt retorted in his too-loud, booming voice. 'We don't need to go out and risk life and bloody limb, when there's so many things to do around this place that we should be getting on with for all our sakes.'

'Oh, give over, Matt,' said Jane. 'Not now.'

'Come on, Matt, don't start this again,' said Jenny.

'…When there's so many things we should be getting on with for all our sakes,' Matt continued over them in his blaring monotone. 'Then maybe this place wouldn't seem like such a shithole. We need regular supplies of food and water. We need to build our defences and keep a lookout for any rescue party so that we can be… rescued,' Matt finished lamely. 'I make all these rotas and plans so we can do this, and no one follows them.'

'You know what? Maybe we should get out of here. Suddenly it seems more appealing,' said Sarah, and Katie and Emily murmured that they agreed.

'I've hardly seen some of you lot for ages. We've all been hiding away. We need to do something to bring us back together,' said Jenny. 'How about a meal? A meal sounds good. I'm starving, now I come to think of it.'

'What's town been like lately?' asked Emily, her timid voice barely audible among the others.

'We went for a scout around the outskirts a couple of days back,' said Jack. 'It's not too bad, but the train station and the town centre are crowded with those lot – the Plebs.'

'Yeah, we should go and give him a send-off,' said Joe. 'And I am getting hungry. It must be days since I ate something proper.'

'Remember we used to go to that pub, The Depot. It used to be our favourite place, once upon a time,' said Nick. 'We had some good times in there.'

'Are you lot serious?' said Matt. 'It's far too dangerous. We should just stay here. Maybe just have a barbecue in the gardens or someth—'

'Oh yeah, The Depot. I miss that place. I can't think of anywhere more fitting,' said Jenny.

'Why not. Who wasn't to be locked in here all their life anyway?' said Katie, breathing out herbal smoke.

'Beats looking at the same four walls,' mumbled Joe.

'You can't be serious!' Matt exclaimed.

'All those up for it, show of hands?' said Sarah, passing the spliff. 

All but one set of hands went up in the room.

'My God. At least we'll need a decent plan and some preparation before we do this! I'm not staying here by myself, let's at least think this through. My one condition is that we don't go off on some half-baked idiotic blunder that's bound to go wrong,' Matt stammered. Katie and Emily had already left, being pulled in tow by Sarah to get ready. 'Remember this was never my idea and I'll say in advance I told you so.' 

Nick pulled the sheet over Ryan's head.

'Let's get ready,' Emma said. She wiped her eyes and tugged on Jane's arm. 'I don't want to be in here any more.' They left Joe, Jack and Andy in the room with Nick.

Joe wiped his eyes and brushed a strand of hair behind his ear that had once been dyed red but had long since faded to a crimson-pink. He rubbed the damp from his hands onto the same large, unwashed emo band t-shirt he always wore that stretched over his expanse. He started to make a quiet, choked speech about how Ryan was a good guy and how everyone looked up to him.

Andy shed soundless tears into his thin, bony hands, hunched as always in his gangly, awkward posture. 'Goodbye, Ryan,' he said. 'I hope you've found your peace.'

'That's nice. Very original,' muttered Nick. 'At least you didn't say something cliché'd and tacky.'

Then, in his dull, booming voice, Matt said, 'You lived life to the full and made every day count. You were a great guy.' 

Nick left the room before he really lost his temper. He waited outside for a while with a cigarette until Matt left, then caught up with him. 'We'll need to sort out some party food,' Nick said, and he jangled some keys.

Matt looked hard at Nick for a while, but then in silent agreement they walked through the gardens to a house with shuttered windows on the far side.