Olly Briggs

Olly sat in his uncle’s office later that night, icing his face while awaiting his return. His uncle had met him at the school and gave nothing away as he told Olly to go home and wait for him. He wasn’t quite sure how his uncle would react in private, he’d never really been in trouble before.

Eli finally strode into the room wearing a perturbed look on his face. He gently removed the ice pack and tilted Olly’s face around. “Yikes. So what happened?” Eli asked, taking a seat, and putting his feet up on the desk.

Olly explained as best he could. Eli’s frown deepened as he listened, steepling his fingers in front of his face.

After Olly finished, Eli gestured with his palms facing up. “Look, the teacher said that it was a mutual disturbance, and you had started it by insulting Leroy's father,” he began to explain, and when Olly began to protest he held up one hand and continued, “To be clear, I don’t believe that bullshit for a second. I raised you better than to start a fight with the odds stacked against you like that.”

“They think that I think I’m better than them, and that you just want to use me to social climb,” Olly exclaimed, “I did tell Leroy that his father was a loser though. That part was true.”

“He is a loser,” Eli agreed, rubbing his chin and looking at the ceiling thoughtfully, “But you’ve got to keep out of trouble. I know, I know, you didn’t start it. You didn’t want it to happen. But you need to keep your guard up and avoid these situations. Keep your nose clean and don’t dawdle around after school. Come straight home. You have a target on your back now, and while Leroy may stop after I call on his father, maybe to threaten him with an unpaid debt or two, others may not.”

Olly fell silent and Eli frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“He said you were just carrying me through until you could get rid of me. And this was how I could pay you back,” Olly confessed.

Olly saw an unreadable emotion wash across his uncle’s face for a split second before his face softened again. “I hope you don’t believe that,” Eli said softly.

“I don’t. But I do need to know, if this works we’ll still see each other, right?”

Eli looked affronted. “Of course! I know things will undoubtedly change, and you’ll probably want to see less of me as you make new friends, but I’m not abandoning you outright. God, these kids are cruel. I don’t want you to be stuck here with the likes of them any longer than you need to be.” He shook his head in disbelief.

Olly didn’t need new friends, but he didn’t say so. He’d behaved petulantly enough already and had come around to the idea that this was happening one way or the other. However, he didn't see making new friends as a priority here. He had friends; he considered the regulars at the bar room to be his friends, and he considered his uncle to be his closest friend. He didn’t make friends at his old school and he didn’t intend to start at a new school. He had a goal, and if his uncle didn’t like the outcome he would have to deal with it.

“Let’s do something this weekend. We can take a tunnel, get out of town, and forget about school and work for a bit. I have a busy week ahead of me. Tonight I have to pay a visit to our dear friend, Leroy’s father, and then I have some other business to attend to later this week outside of Hijinks. However, I'll keep the weekend clear and you can have my undivided attention. Sound good?”

“Works for me,” Olly smiled as he reapplied the ice pack to his face.

Eli's face dropped back to business. “If asked, we’re going to say that you’re grounded. The teacher said all four of you are in detention, and I’m not contesting it openly this time, but make it your job to stay out of their sights and wait for this to blow over.”

Olly groaned. “Detention? When I was attacked three against one?!”

“The world is unfair kid, but leave the rest to me.”

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Following his uncle’s advice, Olly left the school after detention as quickly and discreetly as he could to avoid negative attention. Leroy and his lackeys avoided him, and he ignored them in kind. He figured they weren’t eager to get into more trouble either. His walk home was uneventful, apart from a brief distraction when he stopped by a television playing at a local bar. It displayed a protest taking place outside one of the main routes connecting Occaigh's first borough to Donnol. There seemed to be two feuding factions of protestors; one side wielded signs with sayings like “The end is near!” while the others featured labour rights slogans stating “Protect our Workers”. Things had gotten ugly and the Controllers had been asked to step in as enforcement.

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He had never seen civil unrest like that, let alone in one of the more upper boroughs of Occaigh. It left him disconcerted. To make matters worse, his uncle wasn’t at Hijinks when Olly started his shift, leaving him alone with his thoughts. Well, maybe not completely alone. Some of the regulars had brought up some of the protests. Olly remained quiet as he collected empty glasses, trying to listen to their perspectives and gain any insights that he could. They seemed to mostly fall on the side of the workers' rights, but a few shared suspicions about the tunnels, stating they never fully trusted them.

For the first time in a while, no one brought up Olly’s upcoming aptitude test. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or concerned.

When he saw his uncle again, it was much later in the evening than Olly was expecting. He stalked across the games room hurriedly, back hunched and moving far less fluidly than normal. It was the second time in a very short amount of time that Olly had felt like he was being avoided. He frowned; he thought they had worked past this.

But Olly wasn’t going to sit on his annoyance this time, instead choosing to address it head-on. He charged towards the back. As he approached his uncle’s office, he stopped in his tracks when he heard a faint grunt of pain behind the slightly ajar door.

“Uncle Eli?” he called, concerned. He didn’t wait for a response before throwing open the door, exposing Eli with his shirt half unbuttoned. Eli startled and roughly turned his body to face away from the door.

“Will you knock next time?” Eli grumbled.

It was unusual to see him in a ruffled state, not to mention in any state of undress. Olly shrugged. “Sorry. I thought I heard something, is everything alright?” he asked with concern.

“Yeah, it’s fine, I’ll be right out in a moment,” Eli mumbled, still facing away from the door.

Olly shrugged and turned to leave but then noticed that Eli’s hand was crudely bandaged. “What happened to you?” he asked, taken aback. An alarmed feeling rose in his chest.

“Nothing!” Eli exclaimed, drawing his hand in closer to himself, still angling his body away from Olly.

On closer inspection, Olly noticed that his shirt seemed tattered and dirty, and, was that blood? Olly's suspicion that something was wrong turned into reality when he realized that the strip of fabric wrapped around his hand seemed to have been ripped from his shirt. There was a clean shirt on the desk that he was attempting to change into. He fumbled with the buttons with his bandaged hand, attempting to do them back up.

Heart sinking, Olly abandoned his exit and walked towards him. Eli rolled his eyes and let his hand fall with a sigh, realizing the charade was pointless. As Eli looked closer he noticed an angry purple bruise was forming across his abdomen.

“You look awful, where the hell did this happen?” he asked in a hushed voice.

Eli heaved a tormented sigh. “Olly. Please, not now.”

“Did Leroy’s father do this?” Olly asked, feeling an indignant anger rising within.

Eli shook his head. “No, that fool would never dare.”

“Who then? Since when are you in the enforcement business?” he pushed, his anger replaced by concern, “Were you ambushed?”

Eli was silent for a moment before shaking his head. “I suspected my business this evening could go poorly,” Eli confessed quietly.

This was more background than Olly had been expecting, and he wasn’t sure how far he could push his luck.

“What was it over?” Olly questioned.

“I had a disagreement with a business partner. It didn’t go well, obviously, but it’s sorted out now and we’ve come to an understanding,” Eli said with a shrug, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible about it. However, it only further fuelled Olly's concern.

“I see… Are you okay?” He felt slightly guilty for feeling annoyed and jumping to the conclusion that his uncle was ignoring him earlier.

Eli looked a little abashed. “I’ll be fine, just don’t worry about it, okay? I promise it’s nothing.”

Olly left the room, leaving his uncle with the arduous task of working buttons with an injured hand, feeling deeply conflicted about the day’s events. He did his best to go back to work and put it out of his mind but there was little to salvage his mood for the day. He was already exhausted from the new challenge he would soon face, and now he was worried about things on the home front. It wasn’t until later that his uncle left his office, once again wearing his clean clothes and sporting a much more discreetly bandaged hand. He mingled with the regulars and oversaw some games, generally attempting to appear normal.

Nobody was sober enough to know the difference, but Olly could see the tiredness in Eli’s eyes and the stiff way he carried himself.

Olly wasn’t sure what was going to come next, but he had a feeling something was brewing. Something that threatened to swallow them all whole.

And try as he might, he couldn’t get that feeling to pass.