Guy

Death has its own face.

Even in the dimness Rhea saw it.

Stu Danton saw it too. Death hadn't only taken up command of the body on the floor, it was in Stu's face, in the tawny eyes and gaping mouth; a mouth that fifteen minutes ago her tongue had been exploring.

Stu, shirtless, body quivering finally dragged his gaze from her boyfriend's emptiness, to regard the bronze horse ornament in his hand.

She counted the seconds in which awareness finally settled into his expression. Fifteen seconds; and he snarled like a dog that had discovered something threatening, he released the ornament. It fell, the noise dull padded by the carpet but present enough to mark its weight.

Stu looked at her. Rhea was smiling. It was small but it was there.

"Why are you smiling?" He hissed.

Rhea recoiled, surprised. She smiled out of fear and disbelief. Rhea had been called insolent by her parents whenever chastised because she would smile. It had always been a natural response to stress.

"Jesus, I killed him, he's dead." Stu grabbed his head, fingers pulling at the dark hair.

She couldn't go to him, between them Luis laid face up, hiding rendered scalp and shattered skull.

"It was self-defence," she said softly.

He shook his head, "I killed him."

"He was going to hurt me. You saw how crazy he was. He wasn't supposed to come back until tomorrow. It wasn't our fault."

Stu was deaf to her justification.

But one of them had to keep control.

Pulling the band off her wrist, she tied up her red hair. She was calm, remote; it was a body now that lay there, not crazy Luis who she'd long tired of. Luis who shouldn't have come to hers to find his best friend with his girl. And now he was just a body. Rhea's mind was ticking over, thinking of the wheelchair she and Luis had stolen six months ago, purely for the pleasure of stealing. It was folded in the hall closet.

"What are you doing?" She asked, when Stu pulled out his mobile from his jeans' pocket.

"What do you think?"

"Don't be an idiot."

"Jesus...What the hell do we do then, push him beneath the bed and hope he goes away, bag him up and throw him in the Thames? What the hell do we do?"

That was a question Rhea already had an answer for.

#

She waited in the bedroom, while Stu rooted round the kitchen for old newspapers. He was seeking direction, seeking normality, an undefined escape. He had no idea what she planned. To tell him now would cause him to freeze. There was enough daring in him to have slept with her but not enough to fly with this.

Luis had been right to be angry. But not right to do what he did (though with Luis extremes were always the norm)...there was nothing else Stu could had done, other than watch Luis choke her.

Rhea touched her neck, swallowing gingerly and feeling the pain like pins lining her throat.

Stu returned with the newspapers. He wore a frown that enhanced the speculation in his eyes, but he only said, "that's all I could find."

"I have some old clothes at the bottom of the closet, take them too."

The newspapers thumped to the floor, Stu's eyes now fierce. He turned stiffly toward the window, just his upper half shifting, as if the impossibility of what Rhea's direction insinuated had rooted his feet in place. The window held the dark, and then off to the right the dull-bulleted explosion of fireworks; red and purple, the colours of violence and death.

Rhea walked to the bedroom door, passing him as he stood transfixed, aware that inside a part of Stu had caught on and that consciously he was willing to only play dumb. A defence mechanism; the only way he could cope, to get through the next few minutes was not to believe surface side.

"I'm going to get some cardboard," flicking her gaze from Stu to Luis, "start padding him out with the papers and clothes."

"What for?" But his hands had clutched together, as if that little knowing part, governed them.

"Just do it. This is hard enough as it is without questions." Rhea didn't care to pander to this Stu, cocooned in self-denial. But still, better to let him realise in his own time then to contend with his reaction if she divulged now. While he was like this he was manageable.

A little life returned, irked into being by her asperity. "From where I'm standing, you don't seem so troubled." Then he set to doing his unsavoury task.

#

Stu fought not to look at the wheelchair, Rhea pushed in. But he was having trouble with the visual choices available: Luis dead, the wheelchair possessing a terrible presage, and Rhea with her hair tied up school-style and face criminally cold.

He looked to the window. There was no moon visible in the sky. It was as if the colourful violence of the fireworks had driven it back into the depths of cemetery dark.

Cardboard Rhea had taken from beneath the front room carpet was on the chair's seat, there was a roll of tape on top. In her back jeans' pocket, a black marker pen.

Luis sufficiently padded. Stu had removed his black jacket in order to stuff the papers and clothes beneath his shirt. Stu had tried his utmost not to focus on flesh losing heat, brushing against his hands. Despite the padding of Luis' legs, with the jacket back on, his torso was bigger than his lower part. Leaving the wheelchair beside the door, Rhea foraged in Luis' pockets for his gloves.

"This is sick, I don't like where this is going." Stu said, face salt-pale, eyes seeming drowned.

"Treat it like a doll. Haven't you ever played dress-up before...even little boys play dress-up?"

"Luis's dead." It came out part-disbelief, part-censor; he knuckled tears from his eyes.

"I know." She slipped the gloves over Luis' hands and pulled up the collar of his jacket. With Stu's ministrations Luis' body had shifted, displaying the congealing blood on the carpet. Even in the dimness it was clear.

"Where's his hat?"

"What?" Stu hadn't retreated from the body. In the time it took him to pad his one time friend, the process of desensitisation had begun to take place.

"Luis' hat," she said. "He always wears it."

Stu rose and checked the hall. "I've got it. He must have dropped it when he saw -" he cut off abruptly, bringing back the woolly hat. Stu tossed it at her, violence suppressed but barely.

"Can you pass me the scissors? They're in the bottom drawer of the dresser."

"What're you doing?" He asked, passing her the scissors.

Rhea shrugged as she put the hat on Luis, she touched his face. "It's Bonfire Night, everybody is taking out their Guys tonight."

And there it was. "You're crazy." But it arrived softly, apathetically...the tone of someone lost and unable to truly resist.

Rhea taped a face guard of cardboard about Luis' head, she drew on the rudimentary Guy face, lifted the lip of the hat and pulled it low over the new identity.

"Pick him up and put him in the wheelchair," she directed and waited Stu out as he tried to stare her down. He complied with watery whimpers.

"Do you need any help?" She asked.

"Just hold the damn thing still."

Luis sat suitably loose in the chair; she angled his head down, propping his feet on the foot-rests.

"What's missing?" She said, thoughtfully.

"Sanity," Stu answered.

She clicked her finger and thumb together. "Big shoes, all Guys have shoes too big for them."

"Rhea...stop."

She turned on him. "We need them to lend him some verisimilitude. He has to be realistic." She walked away, into the hall and rummaged in the closet.

"Do you have any?"

"I think so. My brother stayed here last Summer, he's a labourer. He left some of his stuff here, I remember steel caps." Rhea threw back.

Seconds passed before she returned holding the boots. Stu watched her as she removed Luis' white trainers and replaced them with the dusty boots.

"Size eleven," Rhea smiled.

"This isn't going to work."

"It's called fronting it out. If we put ourselves in plain view, no one is going to see anything they shouldn't. We'll be two people with a Guy, just like half the bloody town."

"We'll be twenty-one year olds with a Guy."

"There's no crime in that." Her attention returned to Luis, who was no longer Luis but Guy. "Doesn't he look credible?"

"No," Stu said, determinedly. "He looks like a dead man in a wheelchair."

"That's because you know that. If you didn't, he'd look like any run of the mill Guy. I admit slightly more realistic than most." She nodded, more to herself. "I'm glad he's not Luis anymore."

"I'm not going with you, if you take it outside." Stu was staring at Guy. "He's like those people who pretend to be statues in London. They look convincing enough but you still know they're people. I know he's dead, but he has that energy...any minute now it's like he's going to jump up. Anyone who looks at him will feel that."

"It's dark. People aren't going to be inspecting him. And think of it this way, if they don't believe it's nothing more than padded clothes, they'll think we're having a lark, with one of our mates pretending to be a Guy." Her gaze became accusing. "You killed him; I'm doing this for you."

"He was strangling you..."

"Yes, and now we're going to end this nightmare," no longer looking at Stu but Guy. "Still something missing," she muttered.

Stu watched her hurry from the room, he could hear her moving about in the tiny kitchen. Finally, she returned, carrying a small tin.

Rhea tore off a section of spare cardboard and scrawled: A Penny for the Guy. She taped the card to the tin, placing it on Guy's lap, positioning his hands round it.

"There we go," she said brightly. "What's a Guy without a Penny Tin?"

Stu stared deeply at her, trying to  see what trigger within had been pushed to make her so unaffected, he couldn't. He could only say, "you're crazy."

"Am I?" She returned quietly. "Maybe I am."

#

"I can't do this, Rhea." Stu said, after he'd put on his shirt and coat. "I can't dump him like rubbish, what about his family?"

Anything she said, would only make her seem devoid of conscience. Right now, she was someone different. She had to be. She didn't want to encourage his developing dislike of this new her, for him to judge the 'her' he had known for five years, with this facet that had surfaced for the sake of preservation.

Rhea turned on the light. Where dimness had concealed, the light threw into sharp relief. But she wanted to see her handiwork without the muting effects of gloom, to  make absolutely certain Guy fit the role. And he did, with a macabre realism.

Death had loosened limbs and head, the new face angled down as if inspecting the tin. With the night as a friend, no one would see the truth.

Stu looked up, from where he sat on the bed. "He looks real!"

Colourlessly, she said, "trust me on this; no one's going to see what you see. It's a parody of a person, there's supposed to be an element of realness."

"He Is A Person. This is Luis."

Dark eyes became stony. "Thinking that will only make it harder. We haven't got far to go, we'll take the back roads."

"Where're we going?"

Rhea didn't answer. It wasn't as if the destination was going to make Stu feel better.

#

In the distance, there were cries of excitement. The November night was full with the fragrance of bon fires. But there would be no fire for Guy.

Stu handled the wheelchair. Guy shifted in the seat as it worked across the pavement, Stu cursed beneath his breath.

"This is impossible. I can't do this." He finally exploded, releasing the handles.

Rhea grabbed the chair, voice hissing, "don't be an idiot; just push." She snaked out a hand, locked onto his wrist. "I mean it, Stu. For God's sake, it's too dark to see anything. It's a Guy."

"It's Luis," he shrieked.

She fisted the hand not holding his, wanting to hit him. They couldn't go back. They couldn't undo it. There was only forward. "I mean it, you help me. Do you think the police will see this as self-defence now? No, of course they won't. That's assuming they'd have believed us, if we'd called them. Now, push the damn thing."

His face worked with a myriad of expressions, Rhea didn't care for. But Stu reclaimed the handles and moved on. Ten minutes later, after crossing a minor road, a group of children and two adults turned the corner they were heading for.

Rhea slid Stu a warning glance. "Talk to me," she said.

"What?"

"Talk, laugh, just don't look so guilty."

"I don't know what to say."

The group approached. The kids had sighted Guy and were pointing.

"Oh, Jesus," Stu groaned.

"A penny for the Guy?" Rhea called, brightly.

Stu looked at her in stupefied horror.

The adults dipped into their pockets and fished out pennies for the four kids. The kids rushed in with a momentum that caused Stu to back up in panic. Pennies tinkled into the tin.

"That's the best Guy, I've seen all night." One cried. The boy turned to Stu. "How'd you guys make it so good?"

Stu stood there, voiceless.

"It was hard work," Rhea said, with a Jack-O-Lantern smile.

The adults grinned and herded on the kids. Rhea looked at Stu, thinking of Michael Douglas in that film where he goes crazy while waiting in traffic. "I told you. It's just a Guy."

He blinked. "You push it then."

Rhea did.

By 9:30 they'd reached the back streets. Since leaving their benefactors behind, Rhea had been the one to attempt conversation. Sometimes she wasn't sure whether she was speaking to Stu or Guy. Often Guy's trembling head would dip down and up as if nodding in agreement to her words...of course it was a reaction caused by the un-even paving beneath the wheels. But with the scent of fire in the air, the burst of lights, disembodied cries and the feeling of furtiveness, all wrapped up with the eeriness created by her burden, the idea that Guy heard her, acknowledged her more then the living was seductive.

"I told you we'd hardly come across anyone." She threw-back to Stu, who tagged behind.

"All we need is a group of thugs, that'd be interesting. Wouldn't it?" Surliness unable to be bitten back, had caused him to speak.

Rhea eased the wheelchair across the empty road. There was now only the A4 to get across, lighted yes, but the fulsome dark that seemed to hang and fan out from the concrete stretch of the M4 would conceal nicely.

"Where're we going?"

"To the park," she admitted, finally.

"I don't believe this. Where're we going to put him in a park?"

"Just press the stop button, will you?" Rhea stopped the wheelchair at the edge of the crossing. They were at the half-way mark, she felt suddenly invigorated by the sounds of rushing traffic, a sense of invincibility touched her. They crossed to the centre island beneath the M4 and on, daring to enter the temporary gap in traffic to reach the other side.

"This is wrong."

"It's working." Anticipation thrummed in her; soon it would be over.

#

A slope led down to a concrete path. Rhea hadn't thought about how dark it would be or how difficult the terrain. She was pulling back with all her weight, just to prevent the chair from dragging her down. Stu, now ahead, reached the path and stared back.

"With all your planning, you forgot a flashlight."

Gritting her teeth, Rhea concentrated on easing down her burden. Resentment building; Stu had done this and now he was trying to detract himself from the situation. She relaxed as the wheels found even ground, shoving the wheelchair passed him, heading right, aiming for deeper dark and the place where she planned on leaving Guy.

"You're supposed to help," she said.

He ignored her, again overtaking.

"This isn't my fault," she shouted. "I'm doing this for you."

"Don't say that," he hollered, turning on her. "I reacted, I grabbed the first thing I touched and hit him. I hit him too hard. I didn't mean to...don't make out all this is my fault. You knew what he was like, and you still took up with me." Emotion caused his voice to wobble with the last, he wiped his eyes. "For God's sake," he said with a little more control. "Don't act the martyr."

With his turning on her, she'd stopped. Rhea watched him storm off. Eventually she followed.

The Gothic tower rose out of the dark. Stu was standing in profile to it, by the railings looking out toward the huge pond. The trees framed the pond like stanchions; a prison, a place of no return.

"Are we just going to walk around, or are you going to tell me what we do now?" He said, voice unforgiving.

"We put him here."

"Tell me not the pond, Rhea."

"Why not? It's deep enough."

"He'll float, eventually, he'll float to the surface," shaking his head in disbelief.

"Not if we put in the wheelchair too. He's strapped in. It'll keep him down."

"God, are you going to wheel it in? Where does the depth begin in any body of water? I mean, is there a clean drop or has the mud built up along its outer reaches? I'm not walking into that damn pond."

"I'll go in and see."

For the first time, since Luis had stormed in a given life to this nightmare, Stu laughed. It wasn't nice, it grated and made something burn inside her. "You'll drown."

"I don't plan on getting in..." leaving Stu cursing, she clambered over the railing and walked across the mud to the pond's edge. Taking off her coat and dropping to her knees, Rhea pulled up the sleeve of her jumper. All the while focusing her thoughts on how weak Stu was.

The water's embrace was frigid, oily. Reeds attacked her flesh. There was a mild slope into the pond, but at the limit of her fingers it fell away. Rhea leaned further, from behind her Stu called, "stop pushing your luck."

"It's deep." Retracting her arm and dragging on her coat, she returned. "Come on, Stu, help me lift it."

"It was hard enough lifting him into it. Now you want us to lift both him and the chair."

"Stop!" She couldn't deal with him anymore. "I'm trying to work with what I have. And all you're doing is pointing out obstacles. It's going to be hard. But we'll do it."

"And then we're done," he said, meeting her gaze, his meaning clear.

"Fine, if that's what you want." She took one handle and leaning down slipped her hand beneath the base.

Stu took up his side. "Ready?"

"Yes."

They tried to lift but the chair didn't budge. She could hear Stu straining. Already, the flesh of her hands felt like it had suffered a Chinese burn. "Lift it."

"I am," he ground out. "It's not moving."

She let go of the base, placing her other hand on top of the one holding the handle, Rhea shoved sideways, toward Stu.

"Careful, you nearly hit me." He too straightened. He tugged back and continued to tug, his face convulsing in mingled disbelief and horror.

"What's wrong?"

Stu's eyes flew her way. "I can't let go." Stu was pulling back with enough force that the chair should be going with him but wasn't. A brittle keening replaced his harsh breaths.

"Stop it, what are you doing?"

"I can't let go," he cried, and began to claw at the frozen hand.

Incredulous, Rhea looked at her own hands. Tentatively, she removed her upper one. The hand that had direct contact with the handle felt numb; it was the cold, she thought. Rhea attempted to let go, but nothing happened. It was as if the directive from her brain couldn't reach the appendage. The flesh down to the wrist was hers, it had sensation; it was under her will. But her hand was like a piece that had been severed, remaining fixed in its last pose.

Rhea began to tug frantically, using one foot to kick against the chair; Stu, who had stilled to watch her, now reverted back, kicking and struggling, peppering the air with broken sentences.

"What's going on?" He sagged against the chair, exhausted.

Whimpers were the only response to his question.

"What is this?" He wailed, and gave another mighty tug back.

Guy shifted in his comfortable seat all the while. And Rhea imagined, for one frightening second, him turning to answer his one time friend.

"We're stuck," she said at last, the image still fierce in her mind. "We're stuck to him; I don't know how Stu, but we are."

There was movement, the slightest nudge toward Stu. They looked to the chair and then to each other; the question unspoken.

Yes, it moved. But they hadn't moved it.

The chair suddenly turned towards Stu, rejecting the pond as its visual in favour of the tower.

Stu yelped, skipping to the side. They were both attached to the handles, Stu with his left hand, she with her right, when the chair under no power from them, pushed on.

#

"What the fuck?" Stu yammered.

He had been saying this since the chair completed the first circuit of the pond. That trigger in Rhea, had clicked once again, had engaged fully. She was cut free from what was now holding them prisoners; not thinking about the relentless travel of the chair, of whether Guy would begin a tour guide commentary of their deathly surroundings. What occupied her was the topography. The path shouldn't be circumventing the pond, it should continue on beyond the tower, passed an expanse of grassland favoured by cricketers, then a dominion of trees and heather. This wasn't the park she knew.

"Rhea," Stu whispered, "I'm tired." He was bending forward, attempting to limit the strain on his tethered arm. Then his body crouched, and Rhea realised he was trying to sit.

"Stu, don't..."

His knees touched ground, the wheelchair accelerated and Stu's legs splayed behind him. All his weight was on that commandeered arm, he screamed.

Rhea couldn't reach him, because her working side wasn't nearest him. She was blocked by her anchored arm. She could spin round; forcing herself to jog backwards but still wouldn't be able to help.

Instead, Rhea tried to pull back on the chair, hoping to decrease its momentum. "Get your legs under you."

"I can't...I'm so..." another spiralling cry as gravel skated against his exposed skin.

"Get up, it won't stop, get up!"

And somehow he managed to get his feet beneath him; he pushed up and forward, using his free arm to pull against the chair. The chair slowed and Stu, like a dog that had been beaten into obedience, kept pace.

#

Rhea didn't know how long they'd been walking. She measured time by the circuits about the pond. There had been seven circuits now, without change, except on Stu's side she had noticed tents. They were dark and easily overlooked, if not for the occasional lantern near them.

Stu, somehow, still locked in the mode that normality wasn't far away, asked if they were illegal immigrants; it was known that they'd been camping in the parks, killing the wildlife.

Rhea had wanted to give him the sanctuary of that belief. But he might do something in his desperation to be free of Guy, to attract their attention. And illegal immigrants just didn't spring tents out of nowhere.

"No, don't look at them, Stu."

"Who are they then?"

"I don't know and we don't want to find out."

"They could help us," he said.

"Help cut us free from a dead man?"

"They might help us," he whimpered more to himself. Then his stare became fixed on his frozen hand. "I'll bite myself free," he said vehemently.

"Then you'll bleed as you walk."

Stu pulled back alarmed. "Did you see that?"

She hadn't seen anything.

It came again, a peaked shadow cutting across the path ahead. Suddenly, she was speaking without intention.

"A penny for the Guy?" And it was as brightly intoned as the last time she'd said it of her own volition.

Stu stuttering tried to silence her, but the words came again, more loudly. She couldn't stop herself. And each time she spoke, the shadow moved closer.

"Shut up, Rhea." He said in a voice fit to harm.

"I can't," and the words jumped out again.

The thing was concealed in darkness. Rhea's mind translated the dark into a cowl with a cloak. The thing hunched forward, as if curious about Guy. The wheelchair stopped. Something moved against the creature's chest. She had no idea what it was until there arrived a tinkle in the Penny Tin. Against the pennies from the children, the object glowed with a cold blue light.

"What is it?" Stu whispered.

"Its version of a penny, I think."

Together their gazes returned to the front of the chair, only natural dark greeted them. Beyond Stu, where the encampment waited, a tent flap lifted and fell back.

"How many of those things are in those tents, do you think?" Stu asked.

"I don't know," She said, just as the chair juddered back into motion.

#

The eleventh circuit; the penny tin was slowly filling up. There was an unformed threat in the continuous increase. She had not told Stu, she believed they would come to the end of their journey once it was full.

Many of their benefactors watched from the earth, only stepping onto the path when her voice called out. She had become the Pied Piper of Shades. Stu had not spoken since their first visitor. In his anxiety he had tugged open his shirt, to scratch at his neck...she was glad she couldn't see the blood-beaded welts, she knew had risen.

"I don't want to do this anymore," he slurred, driving deadened eyes her way. "I'm going to stop."

Rhea remained silent, continuing to watch the way ahead. And Stu didn't stop.

Electric coins shivered in the dark, shifted and settled, tinkling a strange melody that made her bones ache more then the endless walking. Sometimes she thought Guy troubled the tin with his hands, a finger crawling up the side to encourage further sound from the coins.

A child figure up ahead.

Rhea fought against the urge to speak. It did little good. The words came and so did the thing.

It didn't walk toward them but hopped, its neck crooked as if by the Hangman's noose, the over-sized head lolling with its motion. It was generous and instead of one coin, gave them four - eager for the conclusion of the show. The face swivelled from Guy to them, offering little clicking sounds as neck bones shifted against one another, though velvet black was all that was offered.

Rhea thought she heard the crinkle of a smile, and then it capered away.

On they walked.

As they approached the twelfth circuit, the sense of knowing their outcome defined itself.

Rhea knew when the Penny Tin was full, Guy would be free of his chair.