1. On The Buses

"Don't let her kiss you."


"Sorry?"


"Don't let her kiss you!!"


"Why not?"


Karen looked at me like a mother telling her son why he shouldn't stick a screwdriver in an electrical socket.


"Just don't. She'll have you for breakfast."


"Breakfast is an important meal" I said, before smugly turning to look out the window of the bus.


"Yeah, but you've got no idea who she has lined up for lunch and dinner."


"Oh c'mon........... I'm a big boy. Besides, who says she's that interested in me. She seems like a decent sort. Funny, clever, unconventional. Not my sort at all.............."
"If I was a bloke, I'd go for her" she said absently.


I raised an eyebrow and turned the other way, staring at an Asian woman trying to get her buggy and children down the stairs from the top deck and off the bus, a queue of impatient, uptight citizens silently cursing in her wake. I stared at the floor and counted cigarette butts, then looked up again.


"Makes you a lezzer then" I said, not quite as under my breath as I had intended.


The force of her hand on the back of my head took me by surprise and my forehead took a whack against the steel bar that constituted the back of the seat in front. I stared daggers at her as she took her turn to look smugly out of the window.


"Violence is most unbecoming of a lady" I said weakly


"Tell it to a lady then, you little tit!"


My stop arrived soon after and I got up to leave in silence. Karen gave me the finger and a placid smile as I descended the stairs.


Her way of telling me to 'take care'.


It was much appreciated.

2. Sex & So On...

The taxi eventually arrived and we left the night and the 3am chill of the city centre behind us. I sank down into my seat as Elaine gave the driver our destination, then she sank back with me, her head dropping to nestle on my shoulder. After a few minutes, I felt her lips and warm breath tracking up and down and from side to side on my neck, starting work on me again . I pulled away slightly and looked at her apologetically.

"Easy there missus!"

"Aw! I thought you liked that." she said, looking slightly baffled.

"I do, it's just........" I trailed off and looked out the window. After a few seconds I turned to look at her again with nothing more than a shrug and a sigh.

"I understand. Not here" she said with a nod. "Look, it's ok Jim. Just relax, we've got all night....."

With that she put her head back on my shoulder, and stared ahead, as our Turkish taxi driver sped through south side streets that were almost totally unfamiliar to me. He said nothing, save for an inquiry about whether we should turn left or right at one point, but beyond that he gave nothing away. Good for him, not enough taxi drivers had their verbal diarrhoea in such good check.

"So, how far now?" I asked her absently.

"Five minutes pet" she replied, squeezing me reassuringly.

I felt a strange mixture of comfort and embarrassment at her response. I hadn't been called 'pet' since I was about seven years old, yet there was something about the dream-like chaos of the past two hours that had set me a little on edge and her serenity was beginning to put me a little more at ease. I squeezed her back and I stared dead ahead into those green-blue eyes. We slowly and discreetly fell into each other and all remaining memories, tension, and bad karma I had been carrying started to drift away into the aether.

The cab crested a rise in the road and Elaine broke away, sat forward and pointed out to the driver where she wanted us dropped off. We fished about for cash to pay the cabbie, then clambered out onto the damp streets of Rutherglen. I only had a the vaguest idea of where we were in relation to any place I knew. I recognised nothing of my surroundings as we walked to Elaine's flat and I concluded that I had left any sense of direction I possessed behind me, somewhere at the bottom of Union Street.

I didn't mind. Where I was going, I wouldn't need it.

3. Rude Awakenings

"Jim, eyes open love"

A gentle pressure on my shoulder and a soft voice in the pre-conscious fog. I ignored it.

"Jim! C'mon, You need to get up"

The voice had hardened a little. Still calm and patient, but I knew who it belonged to now. I felt Elaine's weight on the other side of the bed and I turned to watch her. The room looked cluttered but homely, though I'd had little time to take any of it in the previous night when the two of us had stumbled into into bed, haphazardly undressing as we went. Route one stuff. There were interesting body parts to be explored, a crazy, insanely passionate tangle of limbs that didn't sort itself out for a good half hour.

She had her back to me and was sliding on some garment or other. My brain was still in neutral, and would be for at least another hour.

"Where are you off to?" I said, trying not to sound desperate or worried.

"Nowhere just yet" she said without looking up from what she was doing. My eyes followed her in the half darkness as she walked round the end of the bed towards the curtains, opening them with a quick jerk. The light streaming through the window punched a hole in my half open eyelids, scorching the image of the window pane and the rest of the room onto the back wall of my brain, so that it remained in negative when I blinked or closed my eyes.

"Now, can you move that lazy arse of yours and come and have lunch with me?"


"I'm not sure" I croaked. "I think you may have shattered my pelvis last night"


______________________________



An hour later we were huddled in the little perspex shelter next to the bus stop. I didn't need to be anywhere, but Elaine was working at 4pm in some shitehole pub in the city centre. I wanted to be back in bed with her, wrapped in those strong arms and legs, buried in blankets and body heat like any sane man would. Instead I was waiting on a bus that seemingly wasn't coming, as the wind and rain hammered against our flimsy hiding place.

"Is this bus usually late?" I asked, trying not to sound too narky.

"It's probably broken down somewhere" she replied, giving me a weak smile and firing up another Silk Cut.

"Sorry, it sounds like I can't wait to get away from you" I replied sheepishly. "It's just the rain and wind, I'm not really dressed for the weather".

I must have been staring a bit too longingly at the giant fake fur lined parka she had on.

"C'mon Jim, it's hardly you, is it?" she smirked, looking down at the coat then back up at me. Her long red hair framed her smiling face under the hood and made her look like a member of some long lost clan of Irish Eskimos. I wondered how Eskimos dealt with crappy weather. Maybe they just hung out in plastic boxes that smelled of urine, waiting for the No 25 bus like the rest of us.

"If you're cold, I could give you a wee heat" Elaine whispered lecherously as she put an arm around me.

I tried to put my arm around her, but it felt odd and uncomfortable as we perched upon the thin grey rail that passed for seating in the shelter. I let my arm drop and felt slightly more awkward than usual. She sighed and took a draw of her cigarette, blew out a stream of grey smoke at the ground, then looked back at me with an air of bemusement.

"Not in the mood love?"

I didn't answer, just stared at my shoes and at the never ending whirl of leaves, crisp packets and carrier bags that gusted around us and under our feet. I felt Elaine's hand lightly on my shoulder .

"Look, it's ok Jim, I know what you're going to say"

I heard the low deisel growl of a bus approaching and noticed she had got up to signal it down.

"Not here" I kept thinking


"Just, not here................"

4. A Civil Exchange

I stared through the smeared streaks of grime on my unloved, unwashed front windows and out at the start of another bright, cold and frosty December morning. I enjoyed these high pressure winter days, they made a fine change from the bleak, grey, windswept look that seemed to be highly fashionable at this time of year.

I absently ground my athletes foot on the hard edged base of the breakfast table. The athlete didn't seem to mind, so I pleased myself and continued staring into the middle distance, sipping on a mug of sour tasting instant coffee and admiring the strange beauty inherent in the electricity sub-station opposite my flat, resplendent in it's coat of barbed wire encrusted fencing.

The phone rang and evicted me rather brutally from my reverie. It's nice to be wanted. I wandered over and picked up the receiver. Karen's voice came hurtling out at me like a pack of startled wildebeest .

"Oi! Fuckface!" she yelled. I held the phone away from my ear as she continued to shout good natured insults at me.

"Darling, you really know how to come on to a guy" I oozed in mock sophistication.

"Ha! I came onto you about five years ago Jim, but you didn't seem to notice"

"I can't think why..........."

"Your loss bawjaws. Talking of ham fisted attempts at romance, how did you get on with the bint from Belfast?"

"She's from Dublin" I said, slightly testily. Karen picked up on my annoyance.

"What's wrong with Belfast? Lovely town, great folk.........."

"Nothing at all....." I said trying not to sound defensive. "For a start, Dublin and Belfast are in seperate countries, though don't tell that to the men in balaclavas. And then there's the small matter of accents..... It's a matter of accuracy to be honest..........."

"Aye, ok," she butted in "The dyke from Dublin then. Doesn't sound as good though. So, how was it? DID YE PUMP HER?"

"That's between me and my therapist" I countered.

"Hah! So she pumped you? I thought she would" Karen was laughing now. "She raped my poor, defenceless wee baby, the bitch!"

I waited for her to stop hooting like a loon. It took a good minute or two, but I patiently bided my time as her hilarity slowly ground to a halt.

"Can you keep it down a bit?" I said, my patience starting to wear paper thin. "I don't mind your neighbours knowing what I get up to, but I can do without mine giving me funny looks on the landing........."

"Everyone gives you funny looks Jim. I thought you'd be used to that by now...."

I thanked her for her honesty, then filled her in with a brief and slightly euphemistic outline of my evening with Elaine. Karen listened intently for once, then asked the obvious question.

"So, are you seeing her again?"

I wasn't sure on that score. Elaine hadn't phoned me, I hadn't phoned her. She seemed to like me, but I couldn't help feeling I'd done my level best to scare her off with my painfully stand-offish behaviour. The brief silence was enough to give Karen her ammunition.

"Aw, you didn't, did you? I can see it now. A night of passionate banging, and then 'Captain Romantic' goes and fucks it all up the next morning with his cold fish act. I know what you're like Jimbo, I've sen you in action!"

I blushed furiously, and whilst I knew Karen couldn't see me, I knew she'd detect the admission of guilt in my voice. I decided to cut the conversation there and then.

"Fuck you!" I sneered.

Karen gave a benevolent chuckle and rang off with a promise.

"Remember, I've got her number too. If you don't call her in the next hour, I'll phone her myself and tell her you're gay."

"Why don't you go the whole hog and pretend to be my mother?" I shouted after her.

The line went dead and I put the handset down. I shrugged, mainly for the benefit of my shadow on the wall, then wandered back to my previous vantage point. The crisp blue sky was still there. The white skin of frost glinting in the sunlight was still there.


Unfortunately, so was my athletes foot.

5. A Friendly Warning

The places you find yourself in when you're hiding from the rain.......

I was nursing the remnants of my pint and hoping the rain would ease off enough for me to at least wade my way back to the underground station. A look out of the front door told me I'd probably need water-wings and my rubber duck. I cast a weary eye around the near deserted bar. Was it a bar? Maybe it was a bistro. It had a whiff of seediness to it, combined incongruously with a charming, if pointless attempt to propel the place in an up-market direction. The continental cuisine and over-priced Czech lagers couldn't quite cancel out the yellowing wallpaper, the 'half & half' supping gadgies and Sidney Devine on the jukebox. 'New manager' I thought to myself....

When a large red faced guy in chef's whites burst from the back shop into the bar in a roar of sweaty, rampant fury, I was all but ready to shrug and say "Ok, so it's a Bistro!".

He seemed to be scanning the room for his prey. My eyes met his and I knew in an instant that he'd found it. A fat, raw looking forefinger, decorated with a blue elastoplast and trembling ever so slightly, was jabbing in my direction.

"You! Cunt! I'll kill ye! Am gonna fuckin kill ye!" he growled in a hoarse rasp.

I was standing by this point, and I instinctively recoiled, colliding with my barstool. Somehow my left foot went between the spars of the stool and in my haste to no longer be there, I found myself doing what probably looked to any passing ice skating enthusiast, like a drunken Double Lutz. There were however no score cards being held up as I came to rest on the stained, threadbare carpet. I felt a few dull aches, a friction burn on my right cheek and not a little embarrassment as I disentangled my legs from the now broken chair. I looked up from my prone position and once again remembered why I'd given up frequenting bars on my own. Bad things kept happening to me, and this was as bad as it got. Cookie was standing over me now, his face boiling with the kind of rage that would induce aneurysms in most normal human beings. This guy wasn't normal though. He was at least six-two, and was filling out into the 'double wide' sizes. Lying on my back on the floor like an upturned cockroach, he looked bigger than God.

"Fuckin porkin ma wee sister ya shitebag!! Am gonnae cut ye tae ribbons!!"

I had no reason to doubt him, standing as he was with what looked like an out sized and doubtless very sharp Sabbatier kitchen knife in his right hand. He didn't look like he was going to use it to cut us all a nice piece of birthday cake. I badly needed to get up and run for it, but my 'Fight or Flight' instinct was seemingly out having a fag break. Since I was going nowhere, I whimsically decided I would waste my last few seconds on this earth feebly attempting to find out who this madman was, and why he wanted to kill me to death.

"Hold on mate" I stammered. "You've got the wrong guy!"

He said nothing. I waited for the cliche police. When they didn't arrive, I tried a different gambit.
"C'mon, this isn't a good idea. Don't want blood on the carpet, do we? The cleaner'll throw a fit"

This set something off in him and he sank to his knees, just at my shoulder. I could smell the sweat and the rancid, unmistakable parmesan stench of unwashed genitals. His fly was open.

I fought back the urge to make some feeble joke concerning oral sex. He'd have done one of two things, neither of them pleasant.

I held my breath and looked up at him. He looked a little calmer, but he also had the knife raised in his hand. One cancelled out the other.

Suddenly, the knife plunged towards me in a stop-motion blur. I closed my eyes instinctively and flinched as it crashed down about an inch from where my right ear had been, close enough to embed the dull thud in my subconscious for all eternity. His face closed in on mine and muttered the immortal words that I shall never forget, and on occasion, quote with pride.

"If I ever see yer face, or hear my sister utter your name, I'll hunt ye down, cut off yer bollocks and make you wear them as earings."

With that, he lifted himself away from me and stormed back towards his lair. The knife was still vibrating slightly in the floor. I breathed out for the first time in about two minutes, but it had felt like half an hour.

A pair of hands lifted me to my feet, though my legs weren't exactly up to speed on the deal and buckled a little, giving me the demeanour of a drunk being helped out at closing time. I turned round and noted that the face looked reasonably human and friendly. That would do for now, at least until I was back within the walls of my safe European home.

"C'mon pal, I think you need to be anywhere else but here right now."

"Took the words right out of my mouth mate"

The guy looked at me, half with pity, half with curiosity.

"You dippin' the big man's sister then?"

"He seems to think so....." I replied vacantly. We were heading towards the door now. Once outside, I confided in my new ally.

"So what's his problem?" I asked, as nonchalantly as was possible for a man who had just been invited to inspect the quality of a madman's legalised chib collection.

"Last guy that went with his sister got her pregnant and fucked off into the night" he said, looking me straight in the eye.

"People and their secrets, eh?" I muttered distractedly. The bizarre new slant on my relations with Elaine hadn't really sunk in yet, but I knew there would probably be questions, denials and tears before bed-time when I brought it up with her. I also wondered how the missing link knew who I was. Was it all coincidence and mistaken identity? I looked up at the now clearing skies and smiled. "A good omen at last!" I declared.

I thanked the guy for his help and made my way back towards familiar territory. After the terror of the previous five minutes, I wasn't quite sure what that was anymore, but I was just happy to still have all my body parts intact. For a few seconds back there, I thought I'd be attending fancy dress parties as Van Gogh for the rest of my life........

6. Nocturnal Conversation

In the darkness we lay, feeling the coolness of the sheets, staring at the ceiling, only barely touching.

There was only the sound of the clock on the wall as it plucked it's way through another minute, like someone patiently trying to light a cigarette with an empty bic lighter. Forever.

It barely filled the void of silence. I considered reaching out to the battered old boom box at the side of the bed and flicking on the World Service at low volume, hopefully to listen to a discussion about the mating habits of Barn Owls or a documentary about cheese. It never got that far. Elaine rolled over and I felt her against me for the first time that night. It felt good.

"Umm....I spoke to your brother today......" I ventured, unable to hold it in any longer

She returned to her original position.

"Jim, I don't have a brother" she said eventually with an air of mild annoyance and confusion.

This was awkward. I wasn't exactly sure where to go next with the topic, but I ploughed on regardless. Like Magnus Magnusson, I had started, so I would finish.

"It was random. I was in a pub, The Stables I think, hiding from the rain and he came out of the kitchen cross eyed with rage, saw me, threatened me with a knife and told me to stay away from you unless I wanted to aquaint my balls with the meat slicer in his kitchen."

"Not very good at following orders, are you?" replied Elaine, with the slightest glint of a smirk in her voice."

"Yeah, my mother realised early on that the best way to keep me out of harms way was to tell me to talk to strangers and always play near water. Anyway, what I really want to know is how he knew who I was..."

Elaine sighed wearily. "Ok. First up, if he's who I think he is, he isn't my brother. I used to work with him and we were fairly friendly, but it got to the point where he wouldn't leave me alone. It was quite charming at first, but it got creepy quite quickly. I got out, but I'd keep seeing him in odd places, keep feeling his hand on my shoulder in bars and clubs. He seemed to mean no harm, just felt very protective towards me, so I let it go. My guess is that he saw us together in town, and when you happened to pop into his workplace for a swift half, he went a wee bit mental"

I looked quizically at her, eyes adjusted to the darkness now. It sounded fairly plausable, but I decided not to bring up the pregnancy issue the bar regular had mentioned. That way madness lay. At the very least, madness could wait a while longer to make it's entrance.

"Any more of these crazies from your past you haven't told me about yet?" I asked wearily.

"Who knows....." she trailed off.

There was a brief silence as she gathered her thoughts.

"It's an occupational hazard for gorgeous Irish barmaids I suppose", said sighed, before turning to me, licking my cheek then going to sleep.

God knows we weren't normal.

I liked that....

7 - Human Repellant

Fuck, I hate the Germans.


Benji looked at me through the pint glass in mid slug.  He paused, swallowed and laid it down again.  His features had gone from a sedate, bovine boredom to a pinched accusatory scowl in jig time.   I had grown to enjoy the expression of outrage on peoples faces in the past year.  I wasn't sure if it was my rite of passage into premature middle aged cynicism , or a perverse delayed reaction to my mother's death.   I was not filled with much hope for the progress of humanity or my own good self.  Maybe the two parties could meet up some day and hold a cheese & wine, swap children & talk about our wives.......

Or something like that.

Benji's still a touch aggrieved, God rest his soul.  Didn't realise he was so ethnically sensitive.  Must be that Bavarian blood on his fathers side, the part of his soul that dresses for his girlfriend in lederhosen & a string vest.  He wants to know why I have it in for the Germans.  I could tell him I'm three sheets to the wind and have no control over what comes out of my gob, but settle on telling him I'm of militant Belgian stock and will never tire of berating the descendants of men in funny helmets who twice invaded my nation from the east.

It felt good rubbing this kitty against the grain of his fur.

The truth is a slightly more elusive beast.  I hated nobody, except maybe loud precocious children, salesmen & laid back 'don't give-a-fuck' types who make a living kicking yr arse for not giving a fuck.

I hated those pricks!

Well, I don't really hate the Germans.  I just hate it that they gave so much work to town planners in this country.........  Have you been to Clydebank?

Benji was ignoring me now.  He was fidgeting away with some vile social communication device that might as well have been a fucking Tri-corder from Star Trek for all I knew or cared.  I had lost all trust in mobile phones since they had gone 'on-line'.  I had just got used to Internet being the new TV, without having to deal with mobile phones being the new Internet.  Maybe it was a straight fight now between Ouijja Boards and tin cans on strings to be the new mobile phones and we'd soon all be playing jungle drums to order a Chinese takeaway.

Then Benji was gone.  I had barely noticed him leave, I had been so absorbed in my own thoughts.  This is what happens when you socialise with folk you really don't like that much in the first place.  You dread their company and actually feel your soul corrode when they're sat in front of you verbally defecating on you from a great hight for what feels like the remainder of your life.   When the topics of discussion are as banal as those discussed in your average weekly womens supermarket magazine, it can be hard to tell when the spell has finally been lifted and the hopeless pricks have fucked off.......

I scanned the bar and hoped I'd find someone new to annoy.  Girls in frocks their Grandmothers would have rejected as deeply unfashionable on VE day, cunts in oversized NHS style designer specs, skinny 3 & 3/4 length pastel coloured 'slorts' and espadrilles, and ....................My father.

Sweet Gene Vincent!

The thought of going up to the old man and asking him why he was hanging out with a bunch of tadgers in a West End bar never occurred to me.  Instead I slunk gracelessly from my table and made for the door, hoping I failed to attract any attention and that the cold winter air would revive me enough to take stock of the situation.  In fact,  the sharpness of said winter air took me by surprise.  There had been a nip in the air when I parked my arse with the purpose of getting banjoed three hours earlier.  By 9pm, it was positively fucking Siberian.  A clinging frost held to all objects stationary for any longer than an hour.  Parked cars, window panes, lamp posts,  pavements and possibly a number of beggars that had failed to find refuge from the permafrost in time, as it spread like a virus cross the city.

Things had been going badly for a while now, but I was in a new rut of despondency.  As usual in these positions, I began to think of Elaine and started missing absolutely everything that was no longer in my life.  If feeling sorry for yourself had been a Government subsidised Olympic sport, I'd be a national hero.

Sadly, It wasn't.  I was of interest only to those whom I owed money.

The Weekend Went Much As Planned

I told her I couldn’t meet her anymore, I told her that it was over.
She dropped her head so I couldn’t see what was in her eyes. Tears? Yes, probably tears. She was sobbing, but almost silently, for which I was grateful. If you didn’t know better you would have been forgiven for thinking she was merely staring at her coffee.
I got up to leave, not having bought anything, as I hadn’t anticipated that it would be anything other than the briefest of meetings. I stopped on the way to the door and looked back. She was still sitting with her head bowed. I walked back to her and she looked up at me through smeared mascara and grimy tears, a pleading look on her face. I put some coins on the formica table, to pay for the coffee.
I’m not completely heartless, she’d get over it in a day or two, just as I would.

They say she had been hanging from the branches of the tree for two days when they cut her down. I was out of town on the day, much to my relief. The post-mortem found she had been pregnant. Terrible. To do that to an innocent life, sheer selfishness, only adding weight to the belief that I was right to curtail our dalliance.

It would never have worked, though I still wonder to this day whose offspring she was carrying............

You Don't Know Who You're Dealing With......

I’m behind the clock and I have to deliver. I take a left at the crescent, down the hill, gathering speed, crouched behind the bars, a devotee at the church of aerodynamics. What was it old Kev Schwantz used to say?

“See God, then back off….”

Many people want me to die. Some for good reason, others for no reason at all. They all have their chances and I don’t always make it hard for them.

It’s the way of my kind.

The roads are quiet and I open her out, feel the power throb through the bars, the hum and rumble of the engine and road surface, the trees at the side of the road pressing down on me, accentuating the sense of speed. My mother had warned me about this sort of work, but nights like this always made it worthwhile.

A gravel driveway leads me to the door of a large white building. I park the bike and extract the package, checking my flanks for possible attacks. I press the doorbell and wait……..

“You’re late! Let me check this stuff.”

“It’s not very hot, is it? I asked for Meat Feast, not Pepperoni!! And I said no bloody pineapple on the Special! Jesus! you people! Take it all back, I’m not payin’ for this crap……….”

The door slams, but I know he’s bluffing. I wait for the lights to go out then post it, bit by bit, through his letterbox. He’ll thank me in the morning………..

Climbing The Walls

The thought of it makes me want to puke. Makes me want to vomit in my cornflakes and throw my chair against the wall. It'll pass, like all these things pass and I run the water in the sink and wash my face............

Better........

He stares at me a lot, like he's trying to fathom something, extract my secrets. He frightens me sometimes and I have to look away ............This tiny creature and his huge eyed gaze that I can never accept as devotion, never enjoy, never take pride in.

Sorry kid!

The door goes and I let Karen in. I return to the living room and don't look at the cot.

"How's he been?", Karen's voice trailing in from the kitchen.

"Oh...not sure....". I instantly know my mistake. 'He's fine' would have sufficed.

Karen appears with an incredulous look on her face and turns towards the cot.

"Not sure?"

She turns back to me, face like thunder.

"I've been gone three hours and you're not sure how he is?" She turns to the cot and picks up her son. "Was daddy watching the horse racing and eating Choccy biscuits while he should have been talking to you? Was he? Yes he was, because he's an ignorant arsehole, isn't he?"

I smart as she spits out the last four words.

"He never seems to sleep, or cry or anything" I complain. "Karen, he's like that all the time. Alert, staring at me, like he's expecting something. He scares the shit out of me.................He's not normal.................."

"Oh right, and you're a ruddy expert? Come on Joe, he's your son and you treat him like he was sired in the pits of hell. For fucks sake!"

She's hissing through gritted teeth now, plainly incensed at my inability to relate to the bundle of joy in the corner. My mouth is dry now and I want water, I want something to stop the choking feeling in my throat. I brush past Karen and I'm in the toilet and the door is locked............the hum of the extractor fan drowns out some of her shouting, but not the banging. I decide I don't care and proceed to slake dryness in my throat. No cup or glass to hand, I wrap my mouth around the tap in the wash basin. It's slightly warm, unpleasant, the metal of the tap sour on my tongue but the constriction starts to ease and I find myself able to breathe and swallow again.

I can hear sobbing outside the door. I'm on the floor, back against the cold tiled wall, and I can hear my wife on the other side of the door crying. I reach up pull the string, the extractor shutting down, the bathroom light with it. Her crying is clearer now, I can hear her against the door as she gently convulses with each sob. I feel like shit for doing this to her, but it's not intentional, it's not planned or malicious. My darkness infiltrates her life and the damage I do............It's nothing I can fix.

Soon she stops, and I hear her pick herself up and shuffle through to the living room. The silence is narcotic and I lapse into unconsciousness in the dark.

The Last Page

So this is what it's like to be trapped....

You spend half your life thinking the walls are closing in, only to find you were free as a bird all along. Fuck!

Tidy up before you go.........

Leave it as you found it..............

The final duties of a less than humble servant. Watch him go, watch his world vanish at his tail. Nobody likes loose ends..............

The shadows come and go, they ask the usual questions, though I don't know if I'm asleep or awake. Sometimes the shadows just stand over me and say nothing. I know they can't touch me just yet, so I turn away and re-focus, go for a swim amongst the mental fragments of my life. Childhood resurfaces sometimes, prosaic as it gets, like re-watching videotape. Mostly though, the distortion is intense, faces warp, personalities and characteristics exaggerate, places and situations merge. The random logic of dreams, but my dreams were never this real..........................

Whatever they're giving me, it's good fucking stuff, that's one thing I'm sure of. I feel sorry for the heart attacks and the strokes and the aneurysms. The sudden deaths. They didn't get this narcotic land of nod, this psychic adventure playground. Everyone deserves this reverie at least once in their lives.............

I have no idea what's waiting for me, nor do I fear what awaits. I feel like I'll never know when it actually happens. I feel like I'll just keep dreaming, a stray, wandering thought, like the last words of Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger............

There are worse fates. There are greater trials.

The Occasional Life of Frederick Characteractor

“Lawson!!” I yelled, as I splayed my gangly frame out on the floor of the study.

A pitiful looking figure appeared in the doorway and looked in askance at me. I ignored his insolence and enquired as to the whereabouts of my good trousers.

“They’re still hanging from the barbed wire at the rec ground. I saw them this morning as I went for the papers.”

The memories of my monstrous behaviour the previous night emerged all too quickly from the darker corners of my hung-over brain. The convoluted afternoon drinking games with Charlie and his mother in law at their flat in Hammersmith, the ‘Bachelorette Party’ we crashed in Chelsea, the stolen vintage champagne bottles used as tenpins in a quiet suburban street at 2am………………………..

The bit involving my trousers was a blank though. I half suspected Lawson was pulling my chain on this one, but I’d never known him to have a particularly waggish sense of humour, and I’d have been horrified to see him develop one at this late stage. I had consumed rather more than normal to be honest and it wouldn’t have surprised me at all if i’d staggered home trouserless.

“Ok, what about my white tennis slacks?”

Silence.

“Even those revolting chinos you bought me…..?”

I lay back and stared at the ceiling again and thought about things that made me happy. My cousin Emma popped into my head.

“No Freddie!, Bad boy……” I muttered to myself. Definitely out of bounds. Just because Charlie was doing more than just lodging with his mother in law, didn’t mean I had to go down a similar route myself. Lord No! She did make me happy though, such a delightful lass, short brown hair last I saw her, a wicked smile and that ‘I dare you’ look in her eyes. She also never had a good word to say for me, which just made me all the fonder of her.

I thought of the pub at the bottom of the road, suburban train rides, fishing on canal banks, washing in the park fountain last summer because one of Lawsons hideously prissy fag friends had decided to stay for a few months and couldn’t stand to use the bath after I’d taken my weekly ’rinse’………………….

All these things made me feel a bit better about being hungover and ignored and trouserless and lying on a cold floor staring at the cracks in the ceiling.

Wake Me Up When It's Time To Go Home

The wind whipped between my legs as I sat on the slightly damp grass of the little outcrop, giving me the irrational sense of being less secure than I really was. I had scuttled and scrambled onto it like a drunk man making his way from lamp post to lamp post at closing time on a saturday night. Having made it this far I wasn't about to go back just because I didn't have a tartan rug to park my arse on. It was 8AM, the sky was indecently blue and the water shimmered in the sunlight as it was contractually obliged to on these 'perfect' late spring mornings.

The lodgings had been a great disappointment and the landlady an indifferent and offhand woman who made no attempt to disguise her discontent towards the world and her boredom at seeing yet another pratted wastrel alight on her front porch looking for a room late in the day. I wasn't really in a position to complain or even blame her. I had taken her last room, a tiny, slightly damp attic that looked like it had been converted for human habitation only recently and in rather an ad-hoc manner too if I may say......

I slept fitfully and woke at 6.30. I decided to make a break for it, bodyswerving breakfast and the inevitable and demeaning 'chuck out'. The local cafe was open and I parted with a little loose change in exchange for some ham rolls and a cup of tea. I was still gripped by the compulsion to move though, that old vice............ An hour later I was as far east as it was possible to get on this particular part of the world and listening to the sound of life, albeit life getting out of second gear and preparing to go about it's day.

...........and it reminded me of everything I hated, everything I had run from. It reminded me of people and places I had hoped to erase from my memory forever. A fool, escaping from something that can't be escaped from. I second guessed myself and decided not to have a look over the edge of the cliff. I laid back on the ever drying grass and hoped to catch a lethal dose of sunburn instead.

I wasn't aware that my actions were being watched. I wasn't aware, solipsist that I am, that anyone would be interested in my aimless maneuverings. Principally because I wasn't interested in theirs. It would seem someone had picked me out from the crowd anyway, because my belongings were in front of the B&B when I got back.

I don't consider myself to be an awkward customer on the whole, I let more things go than I really ought to but this was all a little much. After a few minutes of ringing the front doorbell, the landlady appeared, about as pleased to see me as she had been the previous day but with the added menace that came with brandishing a wooden broom. She enquired as to exactly what my business was and why I was bothering her in her housekeeping duties. I pointed at the old suitcase and cloth satchel sitting in the street, by the front wall of the guest house. Didn't she know that they could have been rifled by any old vagrant or passer by? She snorted with contempt and offered the opinion that even the tramps wouldn't lower themselves to raking through such disheveled looking items. I caught myself before I called her a dried up grasping old skell and smiled serenely at her before asking why they were on the pavement rather than in my room.

Ten minutes later I wished I had just let rip, for all the good my attempt at charm and diplomacy did me. It would seem she wanted my room for someone more important but used my early departure and failure to hand my key in as the perfect excuse to be rid of me. I had been rejected before, naturally, but there was something degrading and soul crushing about being considered unworthy of an attic room in the worst digs in town.

It was still early, about 10.30 am and I was a little tired. An hour was spent wandering like a ghost through the town. The high street had a certain charm to it, as did the esplanade. I found myself edging towards the arcades on the seafront. I immediately regretted this as the baseball cap in the booth of the first one I arrived at gave me the eye the moment I stepped in. I went to a fruit machine and stuck some loose change in. I felt a prescence behind me almost immediately and turned to see the guy leaning on a support pillar and staring at me like he wanted to disembowel me. I almost asked if I knew his daughter, but thought better of it for the second time in as many hours. It was definitely a good idea this time. He followed me to the door in silence and was still standing there as I turned off the main drag and headed up the nearest side street.

The hunt for new lodgings would begin in earnest later in the day but I wanted away from the seemingly strange inhabitants of this town, for a while at least. A small 'private garden' with it's gate unlocked(therefore only private in the loosest of senses) presented itself to me as I walked aimlessly and with increasing fatigue. A nearby wooden bench beckoned and my weary legs collapsed towards it. I sat and relaxed unmolested for what seemed like the first time in an eternity.

I wasn't sure how I had come to be in the police cell. I was alone, much to my relief and still prone to rubbing the rather painfull lump on my head as if I was convinced such an action might make it go away. The cell was a brightly lit and featureless little room with a small bunk on which I sat and a toilet and wash basin in the corner. I used the basin to take a drink and splash cold water on my face. The water obviously wasn't terribly potable, but I was thirsty and I would have wrung the sweat out of a tramps sock at that moment in time. I gave up trying to sit up straight and swung my legs up onto the little bed and gave my brain a rest from trying to piece together the past hour or so.

The one thing I was certain of was that I had fallen asleep on a park bench and had a strange yet not unpleasant dream. In the dream, which I still vividly recall, I had made my way back to the guest house I had left that morning. By this time it was getting dark and a streetlights were coming on. On ringing the bell, I was faced not with the embittered old swine that had kicked me out that morning, but the young woman that had served me in the bakery soon after. Her face had struck me a little dumb at the time. Very fresh, smooth pale skin, she was what you might call plain in certain company, but I considered her to be quite entrancing. She also had the most astonishing pair of pale blue eyes. She looked me over from the doorway with a quizical smile and asked if she could help me. I told her I required a room for the night. She informed me the house was full but said she would organise something. I foresaw myself returning to the attic room. Instead she led me into a small, tidy, well furnished room on the first floor. It being a dream I failed to question the logic of me sleeping in what was quite obviously the land lady's quarters and promptly got ready for bed. I was in the bed when she appeared in the doorway wearing absolutely nothing. She clambered in and as is usual with any pornographic dreams I have, I couldn't contain my excitement. She made the first move by undoing my pyjamas and I responded in a fashion usually reserved for predatory animals and desperate schoolboys having their first sexual encounter.

It was at about this point I felt the crack of something hard on my head. The room and the woman disappeared to be replaced by a tarmac path and a lovely view of a pair of shiny black boots. I also felt something trickling down the side of my face. I concluded that it was something that would be resolved in time and I probably shouldn't worry about it. I passed out again but failed to dream.

The sound of the cell door awoke me from my shallow slumber with a start. I stared incomprehensibly at the large figure in the doorway, trying to regain my bearings and remember where I was and what I was doing there. "Ok pal, yer free to go" said the figure in the doorway. He had come some way into the cell and I could now identify him as the police officer who had manhandled me into the police station. I could prove nothing, but I felt sure it was he who had administered the blow to the side of my head too.

"I couldn't have a cup of tea could I?" I rasped, my tongue still stuck to the roof of my mouth.
"That will be bloody right son, you think this is the fuckin' Hilton or somethin'?"
He looked at me like I was vermin. I suppose I was in a way. I had certainly looked better in my time, though not much.
"I only asked..........."
"Lucky not to be up in front of the magistrate mate" he continued warming to his theme somewhat. "I had you in here on an act of public indecency. Playin' with yerself on a park bench........"
"I was asleep, I had no idea....." I butted in, not liking where this was going.
"Yeah, heard it", he snapped. "Thing is, I don't make the decisions around here. You can go now." He looked wistfully at the light fitting, a little smile coming to his lips for a moment, probably imagining for a few seconds a world in which the cracking of strangers over the head with his truncheon was the kind of thing that got you promoted.
"You said I could go?" I ventured. The officer snapped out of his little bloodsoaked reverie and directed me to the door and down the hallway to the desk sergeant to collect my belongings.

The desk sargeant was a glum looking and rather stout man in what I took to be his mid fifties. He glanced up at me then back down at whatever it was that had been consuming his attention prior to my rather rude interruption. I cleared my throat, trying not to sound too theatrical but also wishing to gain the portly chaps attention. He sighed and put his pen down, his weary eyes taking in my crumpled appearance with disdain.

"You'll be the pervert on the park bench then?"

I opened my mouth to correct him, then I thought better of it and nodded like a scolded child.

"It's a wonder nobody saw you. If PC Grainger hadn't taken that route, then lord knows who would have been subjected to your lewd behaviour..........."

The thought of outraging some brainless inbred cur in this benighted little hovel suddenly appealed to me greatly and I basked a little in the knowledge that my very prescence in this seaside slum was causing some consternation. I smirked to myself, something not lost on the desk sergeant. He stared balefully at me before passing over the few things that belonged to me and asking that he never see my face again. I had never been one for taking orders from anyone, much to my detriment I might add, but on this occassion I was more than happy to oblige.

I slipped out of the grubby little station building into the late afternoon sun and headed for the nearest bus stop. Chances were that the next town along would be just as miserable. I was looking forward to it already.............

A Thousand Days Like Sunday - 1

The distance to the end of the cobbled lane was nothing much, maybe three hundred metres. Hannah's legs were beginning to buckle. She had been running like a lunatic for the past five minutes and the pain of such strenuous exertions had started to overwhelm all other feelings. It had even overcome the soul draining fear she had felt as she strolled down the street just a short time earlier. She was about to throw up for the second time in as many minutes. The first time had been the result of a random thought connecting with a scene in the street and leading to a sudden and gut wrenching sense of terror. She suddenly realised that she had been in a trance for the past half hour and had no recollection of leaving the house. The first thought was "Not Again!!", followed very quickly by blind panic. The world started to warp and rotate around her. Several people stopped to ask her if she was alright but she brushed them aside and staggered off towards an alleyway to relieve herself of her lunch.

Then the adrenalin kicked in and she found herself running faster than she believed possible. Her ungainly lope had doubtless turned a multitude of heads but it wasn't until she was in sight of the flat that everything started to turn to lead. Her feet, legs, arms, head.......all felt like they were being subjected to three times the normal force of gravity. She retched and gagged, one hand on the left hand wall of the lane. Nothing came up but the foul acid stench of bile. She convulsed uncontrollably, this time from physical exhaustion rather than mortal fear.


Hannah's sincerest desire at that moment was to die. Her body did the best it could to oblige but she merely blacked out for a few minutes. She came to and got to her feet before wobbling weakly to the end of the lane. She stood outside the red double doors of the flat and wondered what would meet her on the other side.

Her two year old son was sitting contentedly in the green bean bag in the corner of the living room, thoughtfully chewing the edges of a red stickle brick. She stared at him like he was from another planet. He glanced up at her and gave her a look that seemed to her at least both forgiving and admonishing. She slumped in front of him and removed the red plastic brick from his mouth. He gave it up with little resistance and happily exchanged the tasty morsel for the arms of his mother. She walked around the house continuously with the boy in her arms until they began to ache with his weight and her own exhaustion, at which point she plonked him back in the bean bag and sat ashen faced in the couch opposite.

She called her mother and asked her to babysit. She hated giving her mother any more control over her life than was needed, but somehow that all came a distant second to getting herself the longest nights sleep she'd ever had.

A Thousand Days Like Sunday - 2

I can hear the grass growing.

Almost.

It's slowly getting on top of the tinnitus like background hiss in my head, a residue of the rage and fury of the week just passed. I only notice this sound when I'm out here, up on my hill with just the crickets and the wind for aural accompaniment........... It's blissful purity as long as I don't do anything other than look at the deep blue sky above me. I don't want to see hedgerows or houses or trees, anything with physical form, not right now anyway. Only me, the ozone and the odd wisp of cloud meandering lazily past my line of vision. I shift myself drowsily backwards in time by about five days and remember the vile scenes in the pub on Tuesday night..........................

We were in some flash dump of a style bar near closing time, one of those joints with the comfy sofas and faux fireplaces that can't quite hide the fact that it was an evil rip-off wank hole owned by the sort of people you would cross a six lane motorway to avoid. One of the guys in the group, someone I barely knew, possibly a friend of a friend took it upon himself to drunkenly flirt with a couple very attractive young ladies sitting at a nearby table. I say flirt but what I really mean is slobber, letch and leer. I'm sure in his mind he was some kind of Clooney/Cassanova hybrid. He didn't have much time to ponder the comparison though and within five minutes of him propositioning the obviously bemused and slightly repulsed women, he was on the floor having his face hoofed in by three black clad Yule Bryner doppelgangers. I sat and watched it all unfold and felt somehow like I'd missed several lectures on 'the way of things' and wanted desperately not to be there.

.............And then I wasn't.

Here's a thing. The pollen some people frequently complain about and the resulting hay fever it brings on, well it's never bothered me. I can snort it in and blow it out all day long. I always feel a bit bad when I call on someone I know who suffers from this horrible affliction and ask them if they fancy coming out on a walk on a warm late-summer day like this. I only want their company but I'm sure they think I'm a total bastard. Like most of my mistakes, it's not carried out with malice, just a general lack of thought. It's that kind of day though, the landscape wobbling and vibrating ever so gently in the mid morning heat haze as I climbed the hill to my favoured spot.
I turn over on my front and rest my head on it's side on the grass. It's still a little cool and as such it's fairly pleasant to lie there, closing one eye and then the other alternately, changing the perspective as I watch two tractors below, ploughing their furrows and slowly working their way towards each other in the middle of the field.

Vision blurs and the noise returns.........

The subway train burst into the station in a brief storm of light and echoing abrasive clatter. The gusts of stale subterranean air being pushed through the tunnel in front of the tube train blew my paper in on itself and forced me to give up on any hope of re-organising it any time soon. The carriage was sparsely populated and dimly lit, a faint urine smell wafting under my nostrils as I took a seat near an elderly woman. It seemed like the constipated look on her face was probably a permanent fixture, but I doubted the ever increasing stench permeating the caboose was helping matters. At the end of the carriage lay the slumped figure of a middle aged man, passed out drunk with a Special Brew can clutched in his left hand. A puddle of piss that had formed at his feet was running down the grooves on the carriage floor towards the rest of us. At first I hoped it was spilt beer but a glance at the dark stains on his ill fitting cheap blue denims told me otherwise. That and the smell..................
I needed out before I puked, but the other carriage was no option either. A group of aggressive looking teenagers in offensively coloured shirts were busy using it as an impromptu play-room ahead of a night on the town, a night they would doubtless spend trying to get into pubs and nightclubs with very little success. I needed that even less. I thought of Karen, waiting in the freezing cold outside the subway. I was already late and she had sounded distinctly offhand when I'd phoned her as I made my way out of the office. I felt sure that if I got off at the next stop and waited on another train she'd be long gone, but I was in need of fresh air more than sane human company at that moment in time.

Two minutes later I was on the platform watching the red glow of the trains tail lights disappear around a bend in the tunnel. I pulled out the crumpled paper from under my arm and set about putting it back in order. It was going in the bin anyway but I needed something to keep me occupied until my new carriage arrived..............

Things come back into focus again and I'm three hundred feet in the air instead of forty feet under ground. Thank Christ! The two tractors are now parked either side of each other in the centre of the distant field. I imagine the two drivers admiring each others work and maybe having a crafty fag or two before setting off back to the farm. It looks like a private steading, maybe they're brothers, maybe father and son, maybe husband & wife. Who cares? looks like fun from here anyway.

I'm sitting up for a while now, observing the crows circling the fields to the south. It's an insane avian choreography, rising and falling and circling continuously against the green and gold and brown of the patchwork landscape. They land for a while and then start over again, their coarse croaking caws only a faint disturbance at that distance. I pray the fuckers don't decide to come and roost up here. I also pray that time stops and the sun halts in the middle of the sky. It's not a big ask, is it?

Tomorrow all this will be washed away. No longer the minor deity observing his kingdom from on high. It won't exist. All memory of it will be submerged in the motor-hum of the city, the flash of glass and steel, the chatter of voices and the squeal of brakes.

And the buzzing in my ears that never quite went away will return to sing me to sleep at night again.

A Thousand Days Like Sunday - 3

The tatty old pier seemed to have emptied of all human traffic mere seconds after he arrived. He had actually been leaning against the barrier at the end of the pier for about an hour but he had a habit of going into trances and losing all track of time. Two years in this place had brought him nothing but grief and boredom. The pier was where he went to switch off. A distant and only vaguely remembered aunt had bequeathed him a small house in the town and he had jumped at the prospect of leaving the grimy confines of his home town and his miserable night watchman job. He hadn't banked on the insular, suspicious natives, nor had he imagined how hard it would be to make a living in such a place.

He knew now.

His current job was every bit as crappy as his last. He worked in Mr de Giacomo's ice cream kiosk during 'high season' and worked in the old man's chippy during the long, cold rain lashed winter months. There was little to choose between the jobs as far as was concerned. His desire to spit on every ice cream cone he made for the mewling little brats that queued up on saturday mornings with their pocket money was equalled only by his desire to piss in the vinegar bottle in the chip shop. In fact, he had done just that one friday night. None of the loud, boorish drunken fuckers that came in during his shift had the slightest clue that their suppers had been drizzled in urine. He had laughed about it to himself at the time. He was literally pissing on their chips, as much as they were metaphorically pissing on his. He had nobody to share the joke with though and his sense of triumph wore off alarmingly quickly.

Staring out to sea as the sun finally began it's evening descent, he realised that he had two choices. Get on the train and go back to the hole of a town he grew up in, back to his sadistic father, valium and gin addicted mother and his deranged sex offender brother or stay put and count his blessings. Even getting out of the family home and into a flat wouldn't be enough to drag him back. The local hard men knew who he was, knew who his brother was, would ensure he didn't get a nights sleep ever again. Every memory he had of home consisted of a shroud of grey filth and dullness. Even sunny summer days were shit and when you got home it might as well have been pissing down with rain for all it mattered. There was no contest really. He turned finally and wandered back along the sun dappled walkway towards the promenade. His existance was shite, a trial, endless boredom.

It just wasn't life threatening anymore.

A Thousand Days Like Sunday - 4

The beer in the bottom of the glass had barely settled from the swirling motion he had been making absently for the past five minutes when he raised the glass to his lips and swallowed the flat, foamy liquid. The woman to his left looked hopefully at him, her coke glass long since drained, the lemon slice looking ugly and dirty in the fingerprint and lipstick smeared glass.

'We for the off?' she said more in hope than expectation. She felt like a bored child pulling at it's parents coatsleeves.
'One more' he said flatly, almost with a belch. She would have gone long ago but he'd promised her 'a night'. He always did on a saturday. The cinema maybe? A nice restaurant? Even a walk in the park and a go on the swings.................

The pub actually.

She knew where this was leading though. Drag the late afternoon hours in the bar, dividing his time between her and the pool table. He'd then take her through to the lounge bar for some perfectly palatable but supremely dull fish and chips before returning from his ordeal to meet his mates. He usually never bothered to come back from the pool table by this point. That was her 'night'

She didn't drink. Didn't like the taste of the stuff. On one occassion she had consumed several Baileys but found the sensation it induced in her deeply unpleasant. How she had landed up with a congenital pisshead she couldn't quite fathom. Sods law probably covered it.......

It was about seven o'clock and she was now on the station platform. She had gone to look at the trains. She always seemed to end up looking at the trains. It was a terminus station and she always liked to watch the people boarding and disembarking, coming from the world and going back to it, the deisels rumbling and hissing, the guards whistle, the way the train seemed to take forever to disappear from sight on departure. It was only one train an hour but she was rarely pushed for time. Somewhere to the north and west was the rest of the world. Every time she sat on the platform, the same thoughts rushed through her head. Thoughts of escape. The city, another county..................hell, another country even. It wasn't like she was trapped as such, but she had been a definite case of arrested development in a variety of ways. All she had was her man and a small rented flat and a job in the post office. More than enough for some she supposed but little more than small town status symbols in reality. She was beginning to see why the station always seemed to 'suggest itself' in her wanderings..............

The 7.30 pulled in beside her and snapped her out of her thoughts. By the time she had gained full control of herself she was on the train and the doors were shut. She was perfectly calm. What could possibly happen? It was a train, it was going somewhere and it would take her back eventually. It would probably take her back that night but the spell had been broken.............

1Hundredwords 1 (Office)

I listen and I watch. I Listen for footsteps and voices behind me. I watch the city and my reflection. Out of the window and across the sodium orange glow I gaze and wonder why I'm here and not out there somewhere, existing instead of waiting. I put the vacuum away and stand in front of the drinks machine. Tomato soup or hot chocolate. The acme of my evening and the only responsible decision I will make today. You can't buy this kind of freedom, whole floors of buildings to yourself for hours on end. It'll have to end someday.

1Hundredwords 2 (Bus)

The lights of the distant oil refinery smeared themselves across the rain speckled coach window. I'd never seen it at night and had to admit that it was quite a sight. I watched as the guy opposite pulled on a bottle of red wine and examined his mobile phone before glancing up, forcing me to avert my gaze like a chastened child. I looked down at the bag between my feet and decided that I too needed the warm burn of alcohol in my gut. The headphones went back on and I settled back, waiting for the city to return.

1Hundredwords 3 (Canal)

It was dark and I had been following the canal bank for quite some time now. The light had faded and only street lights from the nearby road were illuminating my steps. It was half past five and the search parties would be out by now, though I had no desire to meet them. School did that to me, made me want to walk, made me want to be places others weren't.

Places like canal banks.

The bridge ahead would pull me home in time but I slowed my steps, content to remain a lost soul for a while longer.

1Hundredwords 4 (Ceiling)

She sat where he lay and stared at the opposite wall. His eyes never left the ceiling. Her hand strayed to his head and wandered through his thinning light brown hair, her finger nails smoothing and combing as they went. She looked down at him and continued the motion, but his eyes remained locked on an unknown point above the bed, placid and pained in a way she couldn't comprehend.

"You don't mind?" she said flatly.

"No..." he replied, almost silently.

The Last Word

I'm standing in the rain as the evening traffic swims and glows and warps it's way past me. I stare at the grey canvas shoes I wear, bubbling and overflowing with freezing torrents of water, my thin brown trousers soaking to my thin white legs and my hair conducting rivulets of liquid into my eyes and turning the night into a yellow/white neon blur. My arm has long since dropped to my side in resignation and fatigue.

Fuck them. Fuck them all, every last dead eyed whore one of them. Would you give an innocent man a half hour journey to a place he could be warm and dry for the night? Of course you would. Would you give a man who looks like I do any more than a disdainful half glance? Of course not.......Yet I'm leaving. The very act of being here tells it's own story. An only child who lost his way in the big bad universe and clung like vomit to the fraying edges as a last gesture of defiance and obscenity to the piety of man. I am everything you despise. I have been everything you despise. I will be everything you despise. Deal with it.

My hatred doubles as love, it allows me the comfort of a dozen dead bodies city-wide, waiting on the garbage boys or the hobo's or the the restless eye of the average Joe Q Citizen, or maybe if one is lucky, the attentions of New Yorks finest. The honour would be all mine.......

An object pulls out of the gloaming fuzz and presents itself before me. The window slides down soundlessly and a mouth utters.........

"Youwannaliftbuddy?"

"Yes"

"Hop aboard mister, you look like i feel"

I decide there and then not to make him suffer. He's an asshole, sure, but he stopped for me. I feel I owe him something........

Testing The Water

There was an odd smell I couldn't quite place as I entered the main room of the club. From the doorway I saw two pairs of legs sticking out of the gap the end of the bar. The legs were tangled and moving furiously around each other. I figured that maybe Harry was a little frisky since he split with Dora, had asked one of the barmaids to come in and "help with inventory"
'You tryin' to screw the cleanin' lady again Harry, ya sick fuck!' I hollered. No answer. I moved in closer, the grunting and scuffling more audible now. They sounded like they were really attacking each other. I stopped about thirty feet from the bar and decided this was not something I needed to see. I was about to turn and leave them to rut like fiends, when a distinctly un-female voice roared in pain. Then a choking, gurgling noise and a handful of laboured breaths....... Silence.
'Ok, not good' I thought. This wasn't the sort of thing you associated with harmless employer/employee slap and tickle sessions. I ran to the bar and peered over. Harry was crouched over the motionless body of a guy with long greasy hair, a goatee and blue denim jacket.
'Ok, now that's kinky' I said with a raised eyebrow. Harry looked up at me, sweating and dishevilled and laid a bloody knife on the bar top. It was what he used to cut the lemons for drinks. The body the knife had just been removed from was that of Bobby Cain, a psychotic small time pimp and dealer who maintained his foothold in the underworld with periodic acts of wanton, if localised violence. He had been a great deal of trouble to us in our enterprises in the past few months and was never willing to accept that we had no interest in cutting him in on what we had going. It looked like Harry had finally put this particular deal to bed.

'So, I see ya iced that fucker at last bro" I smirked as I ran my fingers absently about in the blood from the murder weapon . Harry stared balefully at me.

'Fuck yr comedy routines you ugly cocksucker, just get me a bucket of warm water and some towels so I can mop up what's left of Huggy Bear here.'

I did as I was asked, I could tell he was in no mood. Mr Cain's absence would not go un-noticed for too long, too many folk were dependent on him, and I'm not talking about his clientele or his girls. The cops cut him enough slack in return for info on some of the bigger fish in the pond. I had a nasty feeling Harry & I were about to graduate.......

'Oh, and a couple of laundry bags too. We're gonna have to cart this fucker off and give him a proper burial.....'

'How do you give a piece of shit like that a proper burial?' I asked

'Well,' continued Harry with a tone of rising impatience, 'we put him in the back of the van, drive upstate for a few hours, and then dump the little bitch in the deepest, darkest lake we can find, complete with enough ballast to make sure he never re-surfaces.

'Do we have a.........'

'The boat will meet us at 8pm. Any more questions?'

I was impressed. All sorted and the body wasn't even cold. It looked like it had all been planned, apart from my appearance. I hadn't been due in that day and it made sense that as few people be involved as possible. I was here now though and I fancied a bit of a trip out of town. Upstate was nice at this time of year, though the idea of sharing a van with a dead body didn't fill me with joy. Harry sat at the wheel of the van, the engine turning over gently while he stared trance like into the alleyway. I climbed in and immediately realised just how tense he was. After about a minute, we hadn't moved and I noticed his hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that they were almost devoid of colour. I prised his hands off the wheel and opened the door for him.

'This ones mine, you've done the hard bit' I assured him as he climbed wearily from the vehicle.

The map was in the glove compartment and the cell phone would ring and three men would set sail for a new world in the dead of night. Poor Bobby wouldn't be making the return journey of course, we were dropping him off at his very own 'pool party for one'.

I'd heard he wasn't a very good swimmer..................

Pain Is Not Aching

I watched Richie blow smoke rings from the back seat of the burnt out car and into the warm evening air, his head tilted back on the semi-caramelised headrest, eyes staring impassively through the hole where the roof used to be. Flying with the birdies, walking the rooftops like an invincible tomcat. In his mind...... I turned my attentions to rifling through the pockets of the coat I had found. No money, but a few subway stubs and half full 'Fernando Frozen Yoghurt' loyalty card hinting at some upward mobility in the previous owner. I went back to watching Richie again. He was a cocky little fucker, all wild visions and dangerous fantasy. There were days when I didn't want to know, just wanted to hug the street corners like a vertigo stricken child, but Richie had this way of making you walk tall, of making you forget who and what you were for a time. The reality never quite left you, but adventure was good for the soul and returning to the abandoned factory and the back alleys never seemed to trouble me any more.

The hatch opened out and the light poured into the bare loft below. We both clambered up onto the roof top and set about the nightly ritual. Two bottles of cheap wine rested in a tank of cold water as we perched like feral pigeons on the buildings edge. The view was always the same, the gridded avenues stretching out to the horizon, the river glinting in the early evening sun, the world as it truly was...... An ant colony on a ball of dirt flying through the eternal void. It made you feel briefly content, easy on the order of things. Richie told stories between bouts of bronchial coughing and draws on countless cigarettes. Army tales, school tales, stories about his family, the religion he found and lost, then found again. Only to lose it once more in the rinse cycle of life. He felt sure that God would find him again at some point and quit lying to him, give it to him straight............

The light of the sun was soon overtaken by the neon of downtown and Broadway looked........sick. It always did to my eyes. Richie had a different take on things. Richie didn't start drinking until the sun went down. I was usually half way down my bottle by this time, my dusk-light reverie almost at a close, ready to pass the batton of battered dreams to my partner in crime....... Richie's party trick was to walk along the ledge of the building to one of the corners and back. The first time he did it I flipped, couldn't believe what he was doing. He'd downed the wine, three beers and done a bunch of speed he'd stolen from a now deceased dealer. Still the fucker didn't fall. I barely looked now when he did it. Each time he returned from his stroll I'd look up at him and offer my bottle as a prize. He knew I had faith in him. He knew that I knew he was testing me and that I'd never doubt him. Fuck "parting the Red Sea", this was our own little miracle eight stories up and balancing on nothing more than the curvature of the Earth and a shit eating grin. Sitting at the edge of the building was enough for me, I felt like a cat losing one of it's lives every time I went up on the roof anyway......

Richie turned the old transistor on and hurtled around on the roof top for a bit, an urban tarzan looking for a new vine to catch hold of and swing out of town. I just sang harmony on the Kinks and Beatles numbers that the oldies station belted out on a continuous hourly loop. It felt like God's word on a C60 mix tape, transmitted from a radio station somewhere in Forest Hills for the benefit of the chosen few. Richie was a little more prosaic.

"My dad listened to this shit. I remember he once whipped me to 'Bye Bye Love' by The Everly Brothers after I took a dump on the livingroom floor. I must have been about three. Still, good shit when yr drunk............."

I lost sight of him for a while behind the old chimney stack and I went back to the remains of my bottle, already contemplating another run to the liquor store for more. Soon I sensed him behind me and turned my head up to see him looking unusually pensive. He looked at me and said he wouldn't be 'performing' tonight. I nodded and told him he'd have to come up with a new trick. He sat beside me and said nothing, just drinking long and lazy from his bottle, back in his trance world, re-living his existance and re-inventing the Universe.

"We're not long Gus" he said, staring me in the eyes in a way that I'd never known him to.

"Not Long........? For what?" I stammered.

"Not Long. You wanted a new trick kid? How's this..............Man Walks On Air"

By the time I had made a grab to stop him, he was about two stories down and fading into the black of the alley below. It was all I could do to stop myself going over too. I heard nothing, no yell, no landing, no groans of pain. Just sweet 'lights out' and vile sobering chill that made me retch and gasp for air. The Fucker! The Cunt!

"Richie, You Fucking Shit Stain!!!!!!" I yelled into the alley. The shock wouldn't go away and my conscious mind had to make the effort to swing my numb legs back onto the roof and make them stumble towards the radio, now playing something by Dick Dale. That station never played anything by Dick Dale. It was almost as if a spell had been broken.

I regained my composure and looked one more time over the edge of the roof, breathing hard and through gritted teeth......

"I hope it hurt you Fucker!"