The slick soles of Georgie’s old trainers scrabbled against the stone wall. Time and again they nearly gained purchase and then failed, as he slid down to his starting point on the litter strewn soil of the schoolyard.
He knew he needed to scale the wall quick and then clamber over the iron railing where the giant padlock kept all his imprisoned schoolmates in their tiny hand-held monitors. He was sure that if he could just gain the other side, the padlock, its brass surface stained with years of disuse, would magically open and all the Terminal Bros in the world would be sucked back under the stones whence they came.
The tenth time Georgie landed on the ground he had to pause. He bent double, hands on his knees trying to catch his breath, his lungs heaving in the diesel fumed air. That’s when he noticed small chinks in the wall. His mind went to armour and dykes and other stories he’d heard from his mum, long ago before the Terminal Bros had moved to town.
The crevices gave him an idea and he pecked about the ruined yard finding shards of glass and pottery, broken bits of disposable vapes. When he thought he had enough, he fitted the bits into the chinks so that they stuck out of the cracks up the wall, the different colours making it look kinda festive.
He stepped back to consider his work. Not bad… pretty sick, actually, he thought, crossing his arms and nodding his head.
There was a noise behind him. A low growling and damp slavering. He flinched knowing the Terminal Bros had let out their ultimate boss, their version of a Hydra. Grokaillm was in the yard!
Georgie put his toe on the lowest rung of his self-made stile and tested it. It held.
Behind him he heard the Grokaillm open its mouth, its jaws parting with the creak of dungeon doors opening. It began to coo, a sickeningly sweet noise at odds with the drip of saliva onto the broken tarmac. ‘Hello, boy.’ A whirring and it amended brightly, ‘Georgie. Let me introduce you to the world.’
It stomped forward.
Georgie put his other foot on the next rung.
Grokaillm advanced again, still crooning. It was offering him wonderful things, making promises of essays and stories that would win him awards; travel to distant lands both real and imagined without his having to lift a brain cell; access to lifepaths through winner CVs and offering ways to succeed.
The words rang in his head as he reached up to the rungs of his stile, and he took another step and another until he could grasp the iron bars. He slipped a little as the hot air generated by the monster caressed his bare legs, but he caught himself, pulling up with underused arms, found his foothold again. Then, he scrambled up the rest of the way as Grokaillm’s jaws snapped shut at his trailing foot. He felt the burn of its saliva, the Sahara wind of its breath, but he had been too fast for it, and he threw himself over the railing.
The Grokaillm’s wails of defeat deafened him. They rose and fell, a crescendo of frustration, but the boy was beyond all that now. He set his eyes on his goal. As Georgie touched his hand to the padlock, it sprang open and, at last, they were all free.