—The Rabid Incident—

CH.1 Part 2

༺✄༻JULES༺✄༻

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The caravan door didn’t open so much as perform a dramatic, blasphemous impression of a cathedral’s main gate, smacking the wall, rattling the spoon rack, announcing everyone’s imminent doom as I entered.

Mav, my bestie, was mid-sip of something suspiciously alcoholic and promptly choked, coughing like a Victorian woman who’d just discovered cigarettes. Her long orange dyed hair swung forward when she doubled over, the black roots already coming through. The eyeliner was thick enough to survive a hurricane and the grin she flashed between coughs had the sort of energy that suggested she’d once heckled a funeral and had a brilliant time doing it. 

I loved that about her. Also, if you cannot tell already, she is alarmingly attractive, which made her mockery even more dangerous. Bloody witch.

I stood in the doorway soaking, like a damp postcard of defeat; mud up to my ankles, my shorts plastered to my legs, my puffer jacket clang onto me while carrying this man like an ornate, collapsing puppet. Glitter puffed mournfully from his sleeves every time I shifted him since my caravan is full of it. I'd like to think we looked like a very dysfunctional confetti commercial.

Mav gurgled out.

“Are we doing murder now? Is domestic homicide our new group activity?” She grins.

I slammed the door shut with my foot. 

“Relax. Not murder. Maybe...manslaughter. Accidental. Sexily.”

She raised an eyebrow in the way only Mav could.

“I have never heard anyone use the word sexily like that.”

“Well, now you have. Anyway, he’s not dead. He’s…breathing. Sort of. He’s…breathing…ish”

“‘Ish’ is not a medical term, Jules.” She’s currently chewing gum while holding a cocktail in a mug and delivering what sounds like sarcastic medical commentary. I mean, sorry what? Gum and a cocktail? At the same time?

I love her.

“Wait, shit...hold up!” She squints carefully. “Is that...Callum?!”

I dropped this ‘Callum’ on the sofa like wet laundry and poked his cheek.

“See? Squishy. Squishy means alive.”

Wait a second. I place my hands on my hips questioning a few things. I've never seen this man and I spend almost every day with Mav but she never mentioned she met such a view before. Not that I think he's attractive...Or something.

"How do you know him!? He lives here? In Gora? This overgrown turnip almost crashed into me at the bike track."

I started biting my nails to pretend I wasn't panicking. Callum grunted, a sound that might have been a moan or the attempted pronunciation of ‘help’. I CANNOT afford to be on the run.

“Turnip?” She giggles. “Uh...Yeah?! Back in school, of course I remember. But anyways...that's not a healthy noise.” Mav observed. “That's a haunted-doll noise. Next he'll spin his head like one of those creepy toys on telly.” She was already back on joke patrol. Great.

The rabbit, Bun Bun, the little fluffy fucker, hopped onto the couch, turned around, and started licking his ass like it hadn't just caused vehicular manslaughter. I jabbed a finger at him.

“This lil' monster is the reason I almost committed a felony tonight!”

“He didn’t look like bad luck when I took him in.”

“You didn’t take him in! You stole him.”

“Ahh come on, that posh prick was keeping him in a small cage. You should’ve seen the bunny’s eyes screaming at me, ‘please…bring me with you’!”

“What?! He looks at me like I owe him rent! This little shit looks like an expensive pet and you thought ‘oh ok let me bring it home’?!”

Mav looked at the rabbit once more like he was an unfixable art piece, then melted into a ridiculous, soft-eyed grin.

“Aww, but he came back to us! Fancy little coat, big dumb eyes. He's a cutie.”

“A cutie until he causes a pile-up on the motorway! I chased the suicidal fuzzball through half of Gora Park like a lunatic. Mud everywhere. And mind you, my dignity is still missing!”

She shrugged. I love animals, but this whole day had turned my brain inside out. Me and Mav used to try luring squirrels over to our caravans by leaving trails of crushed walnut shells. Not actual walnuts. Just the shells. Because we were broke. Still are. Have you seen the price of walnuts in England?! The first time they realised the shells were empty, one of them sat on a fence post and stared at me for a solid minute.Not normal staring either.

Evaluating.

I swear the little bastard was memorising my face for future reference.

I've never been able to prove it, but I'm fairly certain there’s a squirrel somewhere in Gora Park with a revenge agenda so if you never hear from me again…it was the squirrels. 

“Don't blame me. We both have a taste for disaster.”

I lobbed a pillow at her. She caught it one-handed, because of course she did. The pillow bounced off Bun Bun, who didn't even blink. I swear he absorbed kinetic energy and grew stronger like a video game character.

“Right.” I said, pointing to the Pandora's box of random stuff in the corner of my caravan. 

“Improvised medical time.”

From the pile of random crap, I dug out last year’s cheap Halloween nurse costume and threw it over my muddy jeans and T-shirt. The polyester clung on like a bargain-bin superhero suit, missing half its dignity and most of its seams.

Mav lounged on the glitter-splattered armchair, watching the impending farce with the kind of delicious patience that comes from knowing you're about to witness something spectacularly dumb.

“Uuuu, he’s got a wraith suit on too!” Her voice shot up with immediate excitement. 

“A what?”

“A wrait- come on, the ghost? That’s what the club calls their riders in Gora. Because ya know, they’re one step away from death.”

My eyebrows shoot up.

Not because I don't know this place. I've lived here long enough to know which roads flood first, which neighbours are cursed, and which shops definitely aren't selling what they claim to be selling. But recently Mav seems to know more than me. Thank God I have her thought. Left to my own devices, I'd wander through life like a headless chicken with a mild concussion.

“They had a race in this rain?”

“When is it ever not raining?” She muttered.

I shrugged in agreement as I sprayed his face with a bottle that might have been water.

Might.

At this point, my ability to correctly identify liquids is questionable. The labels are in my handwriting, which is frankly criminal. He glistened like a sad, wilted sunflower.

“He'll be fine. Hydration. Nature's cure-all.” I announced.

Callum did look like a distracting man. My eyebrow twitched. I hated that my brain had even filed that information away. I've never trusted strangers,  especially not the ones who end up in Gora Park. Nobody comes here for a good reason. People arrive because they're running from something or looking for something dodgy. Both options tend to end badly.

And him?

That isn't a man.

That's a bad omen.

I scrunch my nose not sure what to do. His now wet, obsidian hair is stuck in restless disorder, his jaw marked with dust and grit, lashes catching faint traces of glitter.

My glitter.

“Cold water should work, so I don't know why it’s not-” 

Mav started before grabbing the bottle from me. 

“J-Jules! this is weed killer!”

“Plan C!” I said, reaching for the frying pan.

“What happened to Plan B?”

“It's a secret.”

“Jules...give me the pan.” She is so much taller than me and as she takes a few, slow tentative steps towards me, I'm completely deprived of the lighting coming from behind her.

“Nah-huh.”

“Jules—”

“Mav—”

We grappled like deranged toddlers, me half-kneeling on Callum's chest, probably depriving him of what little oxygen he had left. Not the worst way for him to go.

Mav reached for my hair and grabbed a handful of curls and I squealed while she poked her tongue at me. A war zone developed over the pan which is probably still holding leftover breakfast. Mmm...burned frikin, fried eggs.

Then—

CRASH..

We froze. A sound came from outside my caravan like a horror movie.

Meanwhile, the rabbit sat on my sofa. On my FUCKING shirt, the one I'd just handmade after scrapping everything to snag that shit on sale!

The sound came again, heavier this time, and Mav's eyes darted to the door.

We simultaneously fell silent and looked at each other in dead silence.

I can practically hear Mav blink. What in the actual hell is outside?!

We squealed surprised as the door smashed open and a figure in dripping dirt-bike gear filled the frame, rain sluicing off him in dramatic rivulets. For a beat he could have been Death in a helmet. Mav leaned forward, eyebrows leering.

The figure shrugged off the helmet. The voice followed, flat, weary, and a little exasperated.

“For God's sake. You two are exhausting.”

His canines caught the dim light.

Lore.

The nightmare Gora Park had somehow spat out was standing in my doorway. All broad shoulders and wet hair plastered across his forehead, like he’d been dragged through a hedge and told his tea was an insult.

There was a scar cutting across his forehead, more visible now with rainwater still clinging to his skin.

Two men in my caravan in one night? Fucking livid. 

He stood there soaked to the bone, grimacing the way guys do when life has been particularly rude to them - the living embodiment of ‘too tired for this shit’. Mav had an appropriately slack-jawed, which, honestly, I couldn't blame her; he was stupidly easy on the eyes even when he looked like a wet napkin.

“Lore?!” Mav blurted.

He took one look at the glitter, the rabbit, the frying pan, the questionable liquids, and the semi-conscious man slumped on my sofa and waved a hand like he was dismissing an unpleasant fly.

And when he spoke, I noticed his teeth again. Just for a second.

“What the fuck is happening?” he asked, taking in the whole scene in a single, perfectly weary sweep. Then, because the universe clearly enjoyed awkward reunions, his gaze snapped to Mav.

“You again. Of fucking course.”

Mav, who'd been resuming sipping on her ‘tea’ avoided my gaze. I shot her a confused look; they'd clearly had a recent summit I'd missed. For a hot second I considered putting on my detective hat, but then I remembered I was still wearing an ill-fitting nurse costume and had literal mud up to my knees while sitting on mister half-dead right here, so I decided not to be the Investigator of Gossip tonight.

Lore let out a long, exasperated breath, the kind of breath that says he's reached the end of his patience allowance and is now on "emergency" mode. If anyone deserved to be allowed a little rage at this point, it was him.

“Fixing your disasters is a full-time job.” He muttered, half-complaint, half-admiration. “I should be charging rent to live in your mistakes.”

Mav offered her signature smile, part sheepish, part guilty. His glare softened the second he clocked Callum, draped dramatically on my glitter-covered sofa like some kind of disco corpse left over from Studio 54. Sparkles clung to his jacket, his hair, his eyelashes, like glitter had declared bankruptcy on my carpet and moved into his bloodstream instead.

Lore pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering something low, clearly trying to keep composed while flashing another quick look at her. And honestly? Whatever was going on between those two...Lore's frustration, Callum's presence, Mav suddenly sitting there like a calm statue instead of her usual gremlin self. It was uncharted territory for me. And I don't like uncharted territory. I like maps...Or IKEA instructions. Not this.

Still, it was entertaining me more than it should have. I was mid-smirk at the absurdity of it all when something shifted.

Oh. Correction. Someone shifted.

Right underneath me.

༺✄༻