"Summer Morsels" by Llrâc Nôdbé
Summer Morsels
by Llrâc Nôdbé
Venturing further into Colledig Woods than his father had allowed, Benji knelt by the pool, plunged his arm into the cold, murky water and scooped a clump of slimy frogspawn and tadpoles into his jam jar. Bulrushes tickled his nose and he sneezed, sloping some of his new friends back into the pond.
Fetching the discarded lid from the grassed bank, he fumbled it onto the jar and twisted. Metal burrs, from the holes his father had drilled into the lid, sliced his thumb and he winced as droplets of blood dripped into the pond.
Sitting back onto the soggy bank, he sucked frogspawn juice and blood off his thumb and watched while a dark shape sped through the water, reeds swaying in its wake.
When the darkness reached him, it slowly rose upwards breaking the water’s surface and it reminded Benji of an off-white leather football draped in long, slimy leeches. It shook, parting the leeches that faced Benji.
It was a boy.
A faint smile crept into the corners of his mouth, then he squirted a jet of water at Benji’s feet.
Benji, still sucking his thumb, stared at the strange boy, dumbstruck.
‘Go away!’ urged the dripping boy. ‘You’re bleeding, and Papa’s hunting.’
Pulling his thumb free with a squelch, Benji asked, ‘How’d you know that?’
‘Smelt your blood in the water,’ the boy explained, causing Benji’s jaw to droop.
Benji guffawed. ‘I’m not stupid. That’s not possible.’
The boy waded through the last feet of water and crept up onto the bank on his hands and feet, arse in the air. His swimming trunks appeared to be made of leather and Benji recognised them straight away; he’d seen this boy in the woods before. His father warned him not to play with him because he was feral, whatever that meant, but Benji thought he looked okay. Filthy, but okay.
Benji’s walkie-talkie crackled into life saying, ‘Yo, Benj’ I’ll meet you at the pond. I’ve got two jars! Over,’ causing the wet boy to scramble backwards on all fours, his face ashen.
‘It’s okay, it’s just my friend, Wilky.’ He held the walkie out in front of him, but the boy crept further back into the reeds. ‘It won’t hurt you, look.’ Benji clicked the button on the side of the walkie and said, ‘Wilky, I’m already at the pond. Over.’
The walkie’s speaker crackled with two sharp bursts of static indicating Wilky had received his reply and Benji held it out to the boy, once more. ‘It won’t bite,’ he assured.
Finally, the boy crept closer and sat down next to Benji. Tentatively, he took the walkie and began rotating it in his hands, inspecting it.
Benji stared at him and his nose wrinkled when the boy’s body odour wormed its way up his nostrils. He smelt like old meat left out in the sun, minus the maggots. Although, that last thought drew Benji’s eyes upwards, but nothing appeared to move in the boy’s matted hair, at least not that he could see, anyway. Dirt was ingrained in the ridges of the boy’s skin, which was dark and aged, as though he’d had way too much sun.
***
After a very long, mostly one-sided, conversation, Benji saw the sun creeping low through the trees. It would be dark soon and he had to get home before then, plus, he was beginning to think Wilky had got lost when his breathless voice crackled out of the walkie’s speaker informing Benji that one of Prosser’s gang of bullies, Moggy, had chased him.
‘He saw my jars; he knows I was heading to the pond. Over,’ yelled Wilky.
Moggy wasn’t as big as Prosser, but Benji still didn’t stand a chance against him; he had to get home, sharpish.
The boy grunted when he got up to leave and Benji wondered how much he understood.
‘I’ll come back. I promise.’
The boy shook his head, but his reply caught in his throat when another boy erupted from the reeds on the far side of the pond.
Moggy.
He spotted Benji and pointed at him, shouting, ‘You’re dead, fatty! I’m gonna smash your—‘
A thick hand grasped around his neck, cutting off his words and his oxygen. Nails, long and sharp, tore deep into the flesh of his neck before ripping outwards, bringing with them Moggy’s trachea.
While Moggy’s limp body crumpled to the floor, the perpetrator slowly came into view.
‘Papa,’ said the boy, his voice low and croaky. He turned to Benji, smiling. ‘He’s only a morsel, but you’re safe for a few days.’
Over those next few days, the boy from the woods, who they nicknamed, Newt, taught Benji and Wilky how to feed off the land, swim, make fires, and climb trees with ease. The three boys were inseparable, but Benji knew their time together was quickly coming to an end. Police search teams had scoured the woods and found no sign of Moggy, and the woods were now eerily quiet.
Too quiet, except for the attention Benji and Wilky were drawing.
***
Inexplicably, Benji and Wilky waltzed up to Prosser outside Garrett’s newsagents, and drenched him in black Indian ink, which they fired from water pistols. Within seconds, the ink had run out and the boys were being pursued.
They flew through back gardens, hedges and brambles, over fences, and hurtled into Colledig Woods. Lungs burning, they desperately tried to keep their distance without Prosser losing sight of them.
Fingers grasped for Benji’s collar before he exploded through the reeds. Wilky dived underwater, but Benji stopped on the edge of the pond, terror etched on his face, before slowly backing into the pond.
‘Where’re you going, you fat twat? You can’t swim,’ announced Prosser, as he gloated on the bank.
Just before Benji’s head disappeared below the surface, he shouted, ‘It’s safer in here. They need to feed,’ he said, pointing to Papa and Newt, standing behind Prosser.