The Berserker
Chapter 13

Lana kissed her grandmother on the cheek and gave her hug.

“I’ll see you soon grandma,” she said, and turned to leave Broadacre Nursing Home.

“Good bye dear,” she called out after her only granddaughter.

She had been visiting her grandmother every week on a Sunday for the past 8 weeks, since she had been in the nursing home, but this week she had missed her normal Sunday due to her sleep over at Aimee-Lou’s, so she thought she would take advantage of her day off school and catch up on her visits.

The nursing home was just on the outskirts of Blaise Village, so it only took Lana 10 minutes to cycle through the High Street and along the lane to Aimee-Lou’s house.

Lana leant her bike against the trunk of the oak tree in the back garden of her friend’s house and she skipped up the garden path to the back door. Three taps with her knuckles and a one minute wait told her that Aimee-Lou was out.

Lana’s mother had told her that she had first met Aimee-Lou Bracewell when she had picked up her doll by accident on the second day of nursery school, when they were both 4 year old. Aimee-Lou had pulled on her dolly to wrestle it back, but Lana was determined that she was going to keep it.

“It’s mine,” you said, with tiny tears rolling down your face, her mother reminded her. “I want it.”

They used to play around most of the time with the doctors and nurses uniforms, performing fake operations on Jimmy Kent. They even cut his hair with a pair of art scissors, and almost got all of his eye lashes off at the same time, only stopping when Jimmy had to go pee pee.

They had fought over boys, and made up over Kylie, and all the time they were bff’s.

“Together forever,” they would promise themselves, they just didn’t know how long forever was.

She stood at the bottom of the ladder that was nailed to the trunk of the oak tree and looked up to the white painted treehouse that was ten feet up in tree.

“Aims,” she called out in the hope that her friend was in, but she huffed a little in disappointment.

She sat at the bottom of the tree, flicking small pieces of wood with her thumb and forefinger.

“I’m thirsty,” she said to herself as she looked around for somewhere she could get something to quench her thirst.

She thought about getting back on her bike and riding to the 8til12 to grab a Sprite, but the cold on her hands had put her off riding anymore, so she looked up in the air for inspiration and had it as she looked straight up the ladder to the treehouse, which gave her a brainwave.

“We have a drink stashed up there,” she said to herself, and then stood up and started up the ladder.

She stopped after a couple of rungs when she heard the movement in the treehouse.

“Aimee-Lou, is that you mucking about again?” she called out.

She laughed as she sped up her climb, but the laughter stopped as Clive grabbed her by the sides of her head as it came into his view.

Lana was dead with a few seconds, as the Berserker tore her body to pieces and carefully stacked her bones as he stripped each one clean.