Chapter 1
Back to Hell

“Hey, hey, freaks! Fuck-faces! Fag and company!”

Their screeches were getting highly annoying. I felt Ricky tug on my arm, trying to persuade me to just keep walking. I couldn’t just ignore them though. It was bad enough the pair had been picked on their peers, but being taken the piss of by some kids two years younger than you was just embarrassing. I don’t know how he could just ignore it. It was the first day of the new school year and we were already getting shit. We were in the last year at least, I could be vaguely grateful for that.

“God, you two are so stupid!” I yelled in irritation as the two thirteen year old boys kicked bottles and cans at the pair as we walked home, “Can you even count!?”

”Fuck? Yes!” replied the louder of the pair of high-pitched twats.

”Well count these,” I snapped and stuck both my middle fingers up at them. As if just to prove they had no brains, I could hear them screaming ‘Two!’ and ‘Hurr-hurr-hurr’ing about I like it was truly rapier wit.

I looked at the blonde-haired dude beside me, who too was gritting his teeth and folding his bony arms tighter about himself. If I didn’t know better, I would say Ricky was bulimic or something from how skinny he was. He ate like a pig though. I envied him; and next to my flab he looked even damn skinnier.

Well I suppose I better give you some introduction. My name is Sloane Hill, I’m a fifteen year old loser living in a town called Malice. Oh do not give me that look, or that The Jam joke. It’s a very unfortunate coincidence that the first mayor was Mayor Malice. Unsurprisingly, his reign was short-lived due to his own involvement in a series of dark plots and conspiracies.

Stupid irony. I’m fairly certain Miss Irony lives in this town somewhere, that or fate treats us like that stupid family you create on The Sims where you make all of them zombie vampire aliens or whatever. Let me tell you, ever since Ricky gave me that metaphor I have not been able to play Sims to its fully stupid extent.

Well, you haven’t seen anything yet.

“Dude, you’ve gotta stop pissing people off,” Ricky commented with a cheeky grin. I poked him in the ribs.

“C’mon, they’re like two foot three or something. I could eat them,” I commented with a stretch and a yawn as we crossed the road, hoping that we don’t nearly get knocked over like we usually do. There was something about teenage mental metabolism that filtered out road safety very quickly I’m sure.

“Oh no, I’m not cooking any more cannibalistic meals for you. My parents were really freaked out when they found the leftovers in the freezer,” Ricky said in a very serious voice. I snorted and whacked him across the back of the head. He was such a goofy idiot.

“You don’t have to, I can cook for myself thank you very much,” I hissed.

“Hence the D grade in cookery,” he replied with a laugh. I whacked him across the back of the head again. Admittedly cooking wasn’t my greatest strength. Then again, neither was art, maths, English, geography, French, history, sports or anything else that may be of use in later life.

My greatest strength was probably being mediocre. I excelled in that.

“Just because you’re going to be a housewife when you grow up,” I jibed. It was like this all the time. Wit, wit, wit, wit, wit. We’re best friends yet all we seem to do is swing our handbags at each other and squawk. Both of us loved it though, Ricky seemed to have a lot he wanted to say he was too scared to say to anybody else. Poor little shy guy. I suppose it was all fair enough for him. The most enmity against me was for the fact I hung out with the only gay (out of the closet at least, a lot of the guys seemed far too defensive) guy in the school. If I left…well, there’d be nothing left of him but a pair of testicles on the path and an mp3 player playing some rock music within one day.

“Alright, see you tomorrow Ricky!” I said, waving him off as he cut off from the path and went into his own house. My house was just a little further down the street. Malice was a small town, and not well known. As in, in the least. I have to say I’m glad. What the hell would it look like if we had a huge city called ‘Malice’? Drug capital of the world? City most akin to the Santa Carla like off the Lost Boys? Jeez.

I take a shortcut through the backstreet and swing in through the back garden, going in through the backdoors which were, as per usual, swung right open to invite a world of crime lords and psychopaths in. My mam probably wouldn’t even notice.

I call ‘Hello’ out to my mam, who’s sat on the sofa with a cup of tea and in an overly fluffy pink dressing gown and chuck my bag down in a random place. I might as well add to the mess if it’s already there. Now that is logic at it’s finest.

“How was school?” Mam asked, not taking her eyes off the TV screen. She had been watching those shopping channels for about three days now. I dreaded the next few weeks, she’s probably ordered tonnes of absolute shit; all of which will take up as much room as physically possibly.

“Eh, alright. Almost asleep in geography but when am I not?” I say, busying myself with grabbing some biscuits from the fridge and shoving them generously into my mouth.

“Good. Get much homework?” she questions again. I sigh and close the fridge door. First day back and yes. Teachers are sick bastards.

”Yeah, tonnes,” I reply casually, boiling the kettle and pouring myself out a cup of coffee as I talked.

“Better get a start on it then.”

”Mmhmm,” I replied through a mouthful of chocolate digestive and I quickly dispersed upstairs, not wanting to waste my limited free time downstairs making small talk with my unemployed mother.

Okay, so that’s basically the set up, scene, script and screenplay of my home life. Quick word with my mother and then I either goof off in my room, do homework or go and goof off with Ricky in the frivolous outside world. Or at least it should be frivolous. Truth is, there isn’t much to do that doesn’t involve smoking, alcohol and knives. But we make do.

Okay, so maybe the town name ‘Malice’ is little suitable considering the state of the youth. Me and Ricky are about the most innocent around, still retaining our virginities, don’t buy knives and keep them in our room, don’t get totally stoned every day, don’t get totally pissed every day (apart from me, in the emotional sense of the word) and don’t buy lung cancer for ourselves.

So…really, we’re just two really, really bored kids.

“So, you’ve returned from your educational prison, have you Sloane?” said an eerie voice behind me. I sighed and rolled my eyes. Did I mention that I have the creepiest little brother in the entire world? I’m fairly certain he’s going to be the youngest genocide instigator in the entire history of man.

“Hey Mikey,” I said.

”My name is not ‘Mikey’. I’m not planning on taking your disgusting, degrading and, in your inferior eyes, ‘cute’ infantile nicknames. The name given to me by my parental units is ‘Michael’ and you will refer to me as so if you will not accept my true name of Beelzebub,” Michael hissed darkly. I turned and glowered down at the dark-haired boy. He stared up at me with huge green eyes and a sour frown on his round face.

“Stop being so weird,” I commanded meekly. He barked a hollow laugh at me.

“”Weird? Is that what you call intelligence, and growing disdain for human kind?” he asked, giving me a creepy, empty smile. Seriously. Spookiest kid ever. You know what it is though? Mam pays so little attention to her children that it’s no surprise. It could just be that she’s not even aware of Michael’s existence.

“Well yeah. Intelligence is pretty damn weird,” I replied without missing a beat.

”Humans are so very pitiful. In all your eyes, standards of a living being lowers upon seeing that they are not simply another brainless sheep following the herd,” Michael said as he turned around and walked back into his room, but not before throwing me a cryptic warning, “See what’s right in front of you, dear sister! See what’s right in front of you.”

See what I mean? I heard that in his school, he actually makes one of the teachers cry on a regular occasion. Everybody tries to just stay away from this homicidal seven-year-old.

Okay, so enough about me, what about you?

“I’m booored, Sloane,” Ricky whined down the phone. I rubbed my head in partial irritation with the guy.

“Ricky, we got home from school about half an hour ago!” I barked, not wanting to reveal that I had been equally as bored until he’d called.

“Yes, and in that half an hour I got booored. Can’t you hear the three ‘o’s?” he whimpered. I sighed and lay back on my bed, flicking through the channels on my TV in vain. Crap, crap, advert, crap, repeat, crap, advert, repeat, crap, crap, crap!

“Alright fine, what do you wanna do?” I asked, putting one hand behind my head and my leg over my knee. Ricky ‘hmm’ed for a moment.

“How about we go for pizza?” he answered after a minute of very pensive humming. It had sounded like he was meditating and reaching out with the Force to see what we should do. I tutted at his suggestion. Bloody pig, always thinking of his stomach.

”I’m not hungry,” I replied glumly.

”Neither am I, meet you at your house!” he chirped and that was that. Looked like I was going for pizza whether I wanted to or not.

“Welcome to the hut little girl and boy!” said the lizard at the front door as we walked in. Malice was too small a town to have its own Pizza Hut, so we had ‘Lizard Hut’. Yeah, its lame you don’t need to tell me so. I can figure out these things on my own. They do serve a mean garlic bread though. Just so you know, that’s not a real lizard at the door. It would be much cooler if it was a talking lizard though, as opposed to a deep-throated guy in a scarily happy lizard costume.

“Still not find a better job?” I asked sympathetically. He looked at the floor sadly.

“No,” he responded solemnly. You had to feel so sorry for the guy. Was this seriously the best job he could get? He probably could do an ad for college or something. ‘If you don’t attend our university, you’re going to end up like this freak!’. Or was that even too humiliating for somebody who dressed in something that was probably a used fursuit for a living?

“Aw, cheer up emo kid. You’ll find something,” Ricky said in his hyper, out-of-school sing-song voice. We had already gotten bored talking to Lizard-dude (as we had lovingly named him a few weeks ago) and entered Lizard Hut without waiting to talk to him. We should really hook him up with a chick in a gecko suit or something.

We sat down at our usual table near the back of the non-smoking area and picked up the menu, even though we knew exactly what was on it. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

“Usuals?” I asked bluntly.

”Usuals,” Ricky replied, far too busy looking at this group of amused looking city guys who had just entered. We got very few visitors, and the ones who visited were usually too preoccupied snorting at our pathetic excuse of a town to do anything much. I raised my hand and one of the nearby waiters (who seemed pleased he only had to wear a lizard-hat as opposed to a full-body suit) flitted over instantly.

”Hey kids, welcome to Lizard Hut! What would you like to order?” he said with very fake merriment and grinning in a way that reminded me far too much of somebody very close to snapping and throwing themselves off a very high building. And then surviving, just to spite people.

“Yep. We’ll have two garlic breads and some coke,” I ordered. The waiter looked very bemused for a moment but seemed to shrug it off and wandered off. I looked across the table at Ricky.

“You know, I haven’t got a damn clue why we keep coming in here. The pizzas themselves taste like horse butt,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

“Malcolm, my sweetie! Hi!” squeaked a voice. A terrible, familiar voice.

”Ashley, honey!” said the tallest of the city boys, and turned to hug the snake in high heels strutting up to meet him. Ashley Woodal, great. Just what I needed.

“Aw hell, not her,” Ricky groaned quietly as he saw the blonde girl break away from the embrace of the black-haired boy. She smiled and stared at him lovingly, occasionally giving any girls in the restaurant a glance so that they knew young Malcolm there was all her territory.

Jesus, you might as well pee on him now girl, I thought privately to myself, not bothering to hide the hatred from my face.

She trotted her way up to the non-smoking area and took a table with her boyfriend and his friends, who kept looking at each other as if to ask ‘Who the hell is this chick?’

A few minutes passed by.

”Oh, looks like she’s…”

”Oh, well, it’s Ricky and Sloane!” she squeaked suddenly. We both sighed and looked at Ashley, who was giving them a blue-eyed glare and venomous smirk. I put my hands flat on the table and looked at her.

”And its Ashley,” Ricky said unenthusiastically.

“Sloane, have you met my boyfriend, Malcolm? Malcolm, this is Sloane. One of my many fans at school,” Ashley said, wrapping an arm around Malcolm’s shoulders and putting a hand on his chest possessively.

“You don’t have fans, you have bloody slaves. And I’m not one of them,” I spat. Ricky sighed and leaned his head against his left hand, running his fingers through his fair hair nervously. I don’t know what he was worried about. It was always the same with Ashley and myself. Ashley bitched and aggravated me, I snapped angrily at her and then we went our separate ways. Those were the limits of our skirmish; he acted like I’d gotten myself into a couple million catfights.

“Oh ignore her Malky,” she cooed and I mentally vomited. Malky? Really? With that the pair walked back to their table, acting as if we had called them over and bothered them.

”I hate that girl,” I spat. Ricky rolled his eyes in a way that said ‘Yes Sloane, I noticed’ and I grinned at him in a half-sheepish, half-apologetic way.

“Hey boy and girl, your meals…erm, side-dishes are here!” said the oh-so-peppy lizard waiter as he hopped up and put down two steaming garlic breads and cokes. Ricky grabbed a slice and shoved it down his throat as quick as a flash.

“How are you so skinny?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at Ricky’s eating, despite the fact both he and I weren’t really that hungry still.

“Because I spend an abnormal amount of time running around,” Ricky said quite simply, devouring slice after slice of garlic bread mercilessly, “Now eat up, we’ve got a long day of crap tomorrow.”

First lesson on the second day was science class. It did not go well at all. Mel, that insomniac girl, fetched the teacher some acid from the cupboard and then finally went to sleep. The acid spilled all over the teacher; he was none too happy about it. It was then that me and Ricky decided to go straight to the back and mutter darkly about how much this year was going to suck.

“What do you have next?” I asked, looking over my timetable with a bored expression on my face as the last few minutes of this torturous science class ticked slowly away. At the head of the class, Mel was just getting up and, upon awakening, had quite promptly began to scream at the agonised teacher for waking her up, when this had been the first time she’d slept in like three months.

I would have done the same, but how the hell is that girl even still alive?

“Oh, mm, art,” Ricky replied, as he was only half paying attention to me. He was more focused on the argument that had flared between Mel and Mr Hamson. Survey says he finds their combined pain highly amusing. So did I at first, but I had quickly gotten bored of it all.

“Pleh, me too. Crap. We got crazy-clay-man as well, look,” I said, pointing at the second period square on his timetable.

“Again?” Ricky asked meekly as the bell went and the students grabbed their stuff, deciding not to bother with interrupting the fight between insomniac and the teacher who had just had his feet half-melted. Ricky and I wandered out throw the corridor, wondering if we had actually learnt anything at all in the past fifty minutes or it had just been a tremendous waste of time and effort.

“What, you didn’t think we’d ever get away from him…mind you, get away with anything in that lesson as long as we don’t ‘hurt’ the clay,” I responded, wondering what I should do this lesson. Almost all last year I had spent my time playing stupid Gameboy games during art class. The teacher hadn’t given a crap. But since Michael had set my GBA on fire for some bizarre-o ritual that was a bit out of the window. When I had asked Mam if I could have another one, she had just told me that ‘Yes, you can sleep over at your friends tonight darling’ and that had been the end of that.

Crazy woman.

Ricky suddenly halted, and I turned around.

“And…what are you doing?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him. I walked over to see that he was reading a notice on the wall with interest, one finger on his chin.

“Hey, we can skip this and third period (history, before you ask) if we go to this,” Ricky pointed out.

”Trip to Enford meeting? Tuh, alright. Dunno where the hell Enford is, but if we miss Crazy-Clay-Man and our lesson with Ashley and the Desperate Pussies, count me in.”

”Damn I love pointlessly wasting time,” Ricky said with a grin.

Authors Notes: Yes, I decided to post my nanowrimo on I probably will not rewrite this, but’d be nice to have a full novel on my account – that’s not something many people can brag about. Not proofread in the slightest, so please send any comments on spelling and grammar errors to my arse. 3