She showers, inserts her contact lenses and blinks in the mirror, waiting for the soft plastic to find their place over her pupils. At school Archer was teased about her eyes; one blue, one green. The difference is subtle and only noticeable if you look closely. However, a well-meaning supply teacher had caught on and pointed it out to the class as a way of educating them on what heterochromia was. As if it wasn’t bad enough having a mixed heritage spanning different religions, now she was even more different than everyone else. She was even given the nickname ‘mongrel’ by one particular twelve-year-old nemesis.

The teasing became intolerable and made it hard for little Grace Archer to fit in with the other kids. Their parents thought her unfriendly, odd-looking, not quite ‘white’ enough, and these sentiments had quietly rippled through school before exploding from the mouths of Grace’s classmates.

Her father had been her world and his murder had cast a bleak shadow over Grace’s life, a life that she thought couldn’t get any worse. How wrong she was. On leaving school one dark winter afternoon, she navigated her way through the relentless harassment and rather than return to her grandparents’ house in Roupell Street, she took a detour to the graveyard. She tended her father’s grave and spoke to him as if he were right there. Her voice drew the attention of a strange man, not much taller than her, who introduced himself as Bernard.

Archer swallows at the memory and without realising it, caresses the scar on her hand.

Bernard Morrice. Child killer.

What monsters move amongst us.

Morrice abducted her that day and took her away from all she knew, and all she had lost.

Archer pushes Morrice from her head where he already occupies too much space.

Unlike Morrice’s other victims, Grace survived, and returned to school. In what seemed like oddly superstitious behaviour, her classmates, and even some teachers, gave her a wide berth and avoided any kind of eye contact. In time, however, the school settled down and it seemed to Grace that her experience with Morrice was viewed as just a ‘phase’.

It was then that the teasing and harassment started again.

By then, Grace had changed.

On the surface she appeared the same normal, quiet and remote girl, but she was anything but. Thanks to Grandad, an ex-boxer, she became handy with her fists. Grace felt like a loaded powder keg rolling through a forest fire. She hid it well, but inside she burned so much that at times she thought her skin was smoking.

She was ready to detonate.

She knew it.

It was only a matter of time.

Little Grace was different. Not just a ‘mongrel’ anymore.

A wild mongrel.

When the teasing and harassment returned with a renewed ferocity, Grace was having none of it.