A Madness of Angels

that it would give up for such a simple reason.

I opened all the lids on the wheelie bins, checking that there weren’t any containing split rubbish bags – and tonight my luck held: every bin looked clean. I held the black dustbin lid I had taken from Flat 5 like a shield, pushing my right hand as far as I could through its handle, until it rested just above my wrist, wedged onto my arm. But by the time I was ready the creature was in sight, padding up the middle of the road and wading through the rainwater that poured downhill, with the slow, laborious and inevitable purpose of a sidewinder crossing the desert.

Here, the rain pouring off my face and seeping into my clothes, and, I hoped, washing some of the stench away, I turned and faced the monster.

We regarded its approach curiously, watching the care with which it advanced towards us, and with what single-minded purpose. It seemed almost a pity to destroy it, since we could probably have learned a lot from its structure, its form of life, but the preservation of ourself took priority.

As it came on, I stood my ground, hefting my dustbin lid in front of me, waiting. It advanced more cautiously than I expected, and before reaching me it stopped, raised its snout and emitted a strange shriek, like the scrape of old tyres skidding on a wet road. It did this three times and then sunk onto all fours, eyeing me up with its unblinking red embers. I felt that if I blinked it would pounce, and was immediately aware of my own eyes and the need to blink, as if, by thinking about it, the unconscious part of me that controlled this action could no longer function, and every blink and every breath had to be a deliberate, demanding thought-process. Still the monster didn’t attack, and it took me too long – embarrassingly so – to work out why. The shrill call wasn’t a challenge or an expression of pain – it was a call for reinforcements.

So much for this.

I looked around the street for a source of heat and found a fragment clinging to the wet surface of the chemist’s bright green and white shop sign. Raising my left hand, I dragged it into my fingertips, crunching it down into a small penny shape between my fingers. The light, sucked dry of its energy, flickered and whined in indignation. I turned to the litterbug. It sensed my intentions, shifted uneasily, rose up a little, flexing the metal shards of one of its paws and emitting puffs of smoke. I pinched the penny of heat between my thumb and forefinger, and it winked out. For a second, nothing happened. Then the cigarette embers in the creature’s eyes glowed brighter, burnt yellow, and exploded into flame. The spitting fire caught the newspaper of its head and burrowed into the soggy mass, sparks digging down through its skull to the dry ash and paper that formed the bulk of its long, snoutish head.

It screamed with the sound of a thousand screeching brakes as flames burst up through the mesh of wire and old laundry line that had spun a frame around its head, gouts leaping out through its nose, mouth, eyes and ears, spreading down the dry rope of its spine and melting the thin fuse wire of its wings, turning their cling-film sheen black and liquid, dripping hot plastic onto the ground. The flames burst out between the metal plates of its belly, glowed red-hot in the joints at its knees and elbows, spat out angry sparks between its clawlike fingers, made the chewing-gum pads of its paws dribble and smoke with a sickly smell, sent gouts of steam exploding off its surface–

But didn’t kill it.

Instead, with a furious roar, it drew itself back on its hind legs, tensed its blazing back, and sprang.

I dropped onto one knee as it leapt, raising the dustbin lid up over my head to protect myself, and braced for the impact. Its bulk blocked out the light; its smell made my eyes run, twisted a knot in my stomach and sent a shudder through my belly. When it hit, it was like bricks falling in an earthquake. I tucked my chin into my chest, hunched my shoulders towards my stomach and put my arms, with the bin lid across them, over my head. Around me, rubbish showered down, and a thin gout of smoke stretched into the darkness. I heard a low moaning sound and peeked up from under my makeshift shield. The litterbug lay on one side, half an arm missing and a small hole gouged in the side of its chest. Around it litter drifted, displaced by the impact with my shield. I staggered upright, head spinning from the shock, and raised the dustbin lid against it. It rolled over and stood, moving awkwardly, its mass now off balance, belched smoke and ash, and threw itself at me. This time I raised the shield high over my head and willed what was left of my strength into it, until the plastic burnt against my skin. As the litterbug drew up to its full height, towering overhead, almost as high as the upper windows of the houses around us, I shoved the bin lid up towards it.

It roared with the blare of a hundred car horns, and smashed one claw down towards the bin lid with the weight of a wrecking ball. The force of the collision nearly knocked me off my feet. Around my shield a shower of bright orange sparks flew out in an umbrella shape, and litter rained down. The monster reared back in agony, clinging to the remnants of its shattered paw. As it did, distracted by whatever it was that counted for pain in such a creature, I threw my shield aside and leapt at it. I punched through a piece of cardboard that made up its loose underbelly, into the sticky, hot, rotten mass of its chest, while it flailed at me with shattered, stumpy arms. Fire snapped at my sleeve as I drove my arm into its middle, up to the shoulder; jagged metal parts, that seemed to float inside the foul core of mouldering food and other remains, slashed at my skin. My fingers closed over something small, that felt frozen, at the exact same moment that the litterbug, swaying precariously, wobbled onto one foot and with the other delivered a clawed kick that threw me backwards across the pavement, spraying organic spattered remains and soggy cardboard as I went.

The litterbug stood, its insides dripping, its head steaming as the rainwater competed with the smouldering flames of its eyes, and looked confused. Its gaze settled on my hands, where, with the creature’s slime dripping off it in a thick black sludge, I held a single scrunched-up ball of paper, ice-cold to the touch. I unfolded it. Underneath the scrawl of symbols, summonings and incantations drawn in black felt-tip pen, I saw the words:

… local borough initiative…

 …recycling boxes provided…

      …collection Monday, Thursday…

            …glass, tin, paper and all organic…

              …making a BETTER environment…

                   …for the people of…

The ink started to run in the rain. The litterbug screeched, with its strange, mechanical, metal voice. I crawled onto my feet. My eyes fell on the open, waiting wheelie bins. So did the monster’s. It started to run, ready to throw itself into my path. I began to run too, slipping onto the pavement and reaching out for the bins, the icy piece of paper growing soggy in my fingers. Just as I reached the nearest bin, the litterbug reached out to slam its lid, and I was suddenly trapped between the bin and the monster’s on-coming burning bulk. I closed my eyes instinctively, ready for the life to be crushed out of me, and dropped the piece of paper into the bin.

There was a bang, and I felt a sudden warm, enveloping sensation. I heard the sound of the rain, and a rustle of falling paper, felt the gentle passage of sticky rotting goo run down the back of my legs and the tickling brush of old newsprint and bits of plastic floating down around me as, without a sound, the litterbug collapsed. Its cardboard skin slid off its rotting flesh with a great wet splat, its wings drifted like angels’ feathers to the floor, bits of hosepipe slid out of its mass like the splattering of intestines falling from a gutted fish. The embers in its eyes went out, the cigarette butts falling with sad little plop plops onto the soaking ground.

I pressed myself against the wheelie bins, forgetting to breathe as the drifts of rubbish settled around me. A few loose plastic bags caught in the wind and floated down the street. A ball of compressed newspaper rolled into the gutter and got stuck between the bars of a drain. A few embers were burning out in a puddle, a crunched Coke can bounced loudly against the wall. I opened the wheelie bin’s lid an inch and peered inside. The inscribings on the piece of paper, the symbols of invocation and command that were the core of any construct and the heart of the creature, were gently burning themselves into ash inside the bin, powerless and contained.

I dropped the lid and turned, rubbish shifting at knee height all around me. Back down the hill, a few hundred yards away, a car was parked directly across the middle of the street. It hadn’t been there before. A man got out of the passenger door. Then two more climbed out of the back, and a fourth, probably a woman, it was hard to tell in the light, got out of the driver’s door. They started walking towards me. Reinforcements, I guessed. They’d heard the litterbug’s wail.

I leant against the wheelie bin and half-closed my eyes, struggling to retain control. We were tired, in pain, and angry. We had not come here for this; this was not how things were meant to be, the wrong kind of living. Everything, we realised, but everything, was wrong.

I was too tired to care.