Young Writers Society

September 2022 - Hale’s Rest Police Station

DC Burke took a moment to write down what I’d been saying before he resumed his line of questioning. It was all unofficial, of course, strictly off the record. Legally, I was dead, gone, vanished. But of course, as per usual, he just had to get to the bottom of what had actually occurred that August. I guess I didn’t mind telling him about it. In all honesty, I liked the attention. I hadn’t had anyone to talk to in a while. Plus, DC Burke was a good man, and an honest one, and I knew his promises to keep quiet would be kept.

“So,” He resumed, poising his pen above the paper in anticipation.“I was just wondering- is there a reason you guys all gave yourselves these weird nicknames? How did that come about? I know that they’re not your real names, of course. Dennis - I mean, Spikey, - was down the station every bloody week. How do you get from Dennis, to Spikey? I guess I’m just curious about all the ‘inner workings’ of your, no offence, frankly quite strange little group.”

I smiled. “You know, you’re actually one of the first people to ever ask about our nicknames. Us being from such a small town and all, these nicknames just become our names, and there are some people whose real names I still don’t know, despite living there nearly all of my life. I’ve just always been Rev to everyone. They never really questioned it. It was me. But I guess there are some vaguely interesting stories behind each of our nicknames. I’d say mine is the most interesting, however. There’s more thought behind it.”

“Please, tell me.” He sat there, his pen ready to scribble down whatever I said like it really mattered. I could’ve just lied about everything and he’d have no clue, but I was still the same arrogant little shit of a kid at heart, who desperately wanted recognition for the things I’d done.

“I was abandoned, right, as a baby. Left in a skip, tossed away like I was some leftover takeaway. I should have died, left out in the cold like that, left there for hours. Left there by my own mother too, I can only assume. I don’t know anything about her or where I come from. But yeah, I should have died.” I paused, scanning his face to see how he responded. I was sill pretty sore about this whole ‘being abandoned as a bay’ business and was sure someone in Hale’s Rest would know something. I always thought they were hiding something from me, but DC Burke just looked at me with these overly sympathetic eyes that made me want to puke. He didn’t know a thing.

“Only I didn’t -” I continued. “The honourable Reverend Green found me. The old Reverend Green, you know, the now dead-and-buried one. Yeah, he was passing by, having missed his bus home from town, and heard my crying. If I hadn’t of have had the strength to muster up those cries, or if he hadn’t missed the bus, I’d have frozen to death in minutes. But I didn’t- he found me. In a skip next to a toy store. And then he took me to the hospital and made sure I was okay. The newspaper wanted to write a story about us, but no one had a name for me yet, so they called me ‘the Rev’s baby’. He said he would have adopted me himself if he didn’t already have four children to look after. So I got put into care. And, of course, when I went to the foster family, I was given a real name. But everyone still called me Rev, because that’s just how it works in Hale’s Rest. And I like it, really.”

“If you don’t mind me asking- what was the name they gave you? Your legal name, I assume? You never had an official file or anything at the station so I never knew.”

“It’s Mary,” I shivered at the mere memory of that name, and who that girl had been. “Mary Martha Craily. I hate it. I liked the Crailys, I can talk about them later when it’s relevant. I considered myself a part of that family but I never felt like I belonged with them. And I just hated the name Mary. It’s an old woman’s name. ”

“I see why you stayed as Rev; you don’t look like a Mary at all.”

“Exactly! Just how Spikey doesn’t look anything like a Dennis, Nails doesn’t look like a Charlie and Rusty definitely doesn’t look like a fucking Edmund! That’s why no one called us by our real names. We didn’t suit them. They didn’t suit us.”

“What are the stories behind Spikey, Nails and Rusty then? They’re maybe more unusual than Rev. Well, more jarring names anyway.”

“Well, Spikey dressed like a knockoff version of Spike from Buffy; he even bleached his hair, combed it all back and then tried to claim he hadn’t taken inspiration from our favourite fictional vampire. Nails, the daft bastard, once hammered not one, but two nails through his own hand, when he was like eight and messing around with his dad's tools whilst his dad worked, and Rusty, well he just has red hair. It’s really not that interesting.”

PC Burk laughed. “It is, actually. You guys had invented this whole other world for yourselves, and that’s where all these events made sense. You had different names because you were totally different people from the ones the rest of us saw every day when we looked at you. To us, you guys just seemed mad.”

“Yeah, well,” God, I wanted a cigarette so bad. “Maybe we were mad, too.”