1 Potato 2

I Can't Read

2010-07-05T03:32:00.001-07:00

I, Gerald Samson, woke one morning from uneasy Kafka-like dreams to find I could no longer read or write. I admit this was unbeknownst to me until later that morning, but I can trace back my literacy to the previous evening, so this regression in intelligence must have occurred during the course of the night. Wait; I feel I am spluttering this story onto the page, when in actual fact a steady approach would suit. Let me take you through the events of that morning first before I give you the reasons for this unique occurrence.

I awoke feeling as awful as always when an alarm disrupts you from sleep. I coughed and yawned my way through my daily routine in fifteen minutes and then set off for the train. My journey to the station encompasses some reading material, in the form of ‘For sale’ signs and road directions, but nothing to really draw my attention to the deficiency within myself. It was not until purchasing a morning newspaper that this became apparent. Sentences, words and letters were thrown at my eyes in unrecognizable forms and structures. Like hieroglyphics, they were symbols my throbbing blancmange of a brain could simply not compute. After flicking quickly through the paper to see if the front page was a default in the printing, I came to the logical decision that maybe the edition in my shaking hands was a one-off, an anomaly in the mornings’ course of events. This wishful thinking was to be proved quickly wrong when I looked at the commuter opposite me, a man calmly reading his newspaper, and more importantly understanding every single word. I, however, could only make out the pictures as the pages were folded over themselves. Stumbling off the train, the concrete platform beckoned to me and I followed, unable to stop the impending unconsciousness.

I awoke to the cornea bursting lights of a hospital ceiling. On either side of me were two elderly patients looking as if they had been waiting for treatment since before I was born. The bones in my neck cracked as I turned my leaden head towards the entrance, I then attempted to focus my eyes on the sign above the door. My eyes slowly adjusted to the impenetrable light as my lids blinkered the world into focus, the borders of the sign were now visible. Now for the big crunch – damn it, what kind of word is that! Expletives raced throughout my tightly wound brain as I breathed myself back into a logical way of thinking. Okay I said to myself, the fainting hasn’t cured my inability to read, but lets see if I can make sense of the sign anyway, maybe I’ll remember to read if I just try.

I stared at that sign for almost half an hour, and blinked only when I had too. But it was to no avail, the sign remained an image; a swirl of red shapes arching across a brilliant white background. I consider myself quite a calm character, certainly not someone who is prone to showing his emotions at the drop of a hat; however, my lack of understanding with regards to my condition was grinding me down. I felt helpless, alone and in all honesty on the brink of tears. In the midst of this buildup to a breakdown a nurse put her hand on my shoulder and asked if I was okay. I turned to her with a worried expression on my face and exclaimed, “I can’t read.”

Later on that day after insufferable waiting, and when in any other situation I would have passed the time with a book or magazine, I was ushered in a small room to see the doctor. After the usual pleasantries I relayed my morning to him, as I have to you the reader. At first the doctor said nothing, letting the frown that formed on his brow do his talking for him. He then asked me rather abruptly to open my eyes wide so he could give me an examination. After shining a light into my face and asking my several simple but pertinent questions about how I was feeling he sat back down to give me my diagnosis. Now up until this point we had spent approximately ten minutes in each other’s company, and I could sense that something was not right, something was askew. This man only said what was absolutely necessary; no word was out of place. For a doctor his bedside manner was sorely lacking. He also seemed nervous, acting as if he were being watched. So I could sense that just before he opened his mouth, what would come out would be unexpected.

“Mr. Samson, I’m not going to sit here and patronize you. I am also not going to lie to you, it is important that you understand that. I could start reeling off a lot of Latin-tinged names to right now in order to bluff you. Trust in the fact that I am telling you that what is happening to you is not actually happening to you. I guess that sounds vague, but it is true, well in a sense. Let me start again.

I am not a doctor. In actual fact I don’t even exist. I am the product of an imagination. These words that you hear have been written for me. You yourself are part of a story, the main character to be precise. This world we live in is similar to the real world, but only in an effort to give whoever reads this something to relate to, something immediate, you understand. You could have traveled into work today on horse and cart if the author wished it.

Now before you panic and call out to the nurse, take a deep breath. And please, I beg you hear me out.

We have been created by an author, as has everyone you have met today. Your memories are simply back-story, for example try right now to remember your mother’s name.

You can’t do it, can you?

You are the lead in this story. I am the secondary character.

I have no cure for your disease I am sorry to say. If you leave now you will no doubt spiral into a series of misadventures. I have no proof of what I claim, if you were to walk down the street outside this hospital and ask passers by to confirm my claims they would be as dumbfounded as you are now. But look at me, look at me deeply, I mean what I say and we can escape together. You and I can escape these pages.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. I know what the fatal error in my escape plan is. If everything that is happening to us is created by some writer, then so is this conversation. And if that is true, which it must, then this is pre-ordained and his will is playing out.

But I have with me something that leads me to believe that we can escape. If this story were to play out as expected, then I would be a minor character, who is here only to lead you on to the next minor, surreal set piece. However, I found this document this morning. I will read it to you now, in the hope that it makes you, Gerald Samson take me with you.

“27^th June 2010.

I am sitting at my dining table tapping away at my Apple Mac trying to finish a story that has been languishing on my hard-drive for nearly four years. This is probably explains why there are many changes in style since the opening paragraph. Looking back at the opening line, I feel in two minds about it. I allude to a favorite book, but is it just to make me look learned or am I actually trying to use the reference to make some kind of statement about the imminent story, God knows. Never the less it will remain, simply because I have now written this letter within the same short story - You can see the postmodern nightmare I have placed myself within.

Even, writing this open confessional is becoming confusing. My wife is two metres from me speaking on the phone about Wimbledon. This has burst my bubble of concentration somewhat and in turn opened up the self-analysis further.

I know what I was trying to say about myself when I began this short story; it was a tale about a man whose intelligence drops all of a sudden and he finds himself out of place in the modern world. This is something that I have felt ever since I began working for a living. Sometimes I think if I turn off the television and sit in silence I can actually hear my brain cells dissolving. Each day I wake up and go through the motions in a job I hate, like a lot of people I guess, and find myself not tested. On each of these days I become a little bit more stupid. Every day I take a step towards moron and I do nothing to stop it.

Yes, I do this as a hobby, a vain attempt to do something cerebral. But it only halts the inevitable. These are concerns that feel ever more at the forefront of my mind, now that I am going to become a father and these same concerns have probably pushed me into finishing this tale.

I go through all the normal parental concerns; how to look after the baby etc… But what real worries me, if I’m completely honest with myself is earning respect. Not with regards to discipline, but in the truest meaning of the word. You want that unborn child to be proud of you, you want be able to impart your wisdom. If they ask you about some aspect of nature for example, I want to be able to answer, not run to Wikipedia. I currently live in a cocoon of music and movies, which is all well and good, it can get you by in over-decorated bar in Soho, but it is not real intelligence. It is bluff, a cover, and a façade that I keep up to hide the idiot underneath.

Self-Pity? Maybe just a bit. Let’s heap on some more.

The birth is just over four months away and by then who knows what will be left of my brain. By the time the child is two it may well have over taken me in intelligence. Each day the modern world takes away some aspect of my initiative, it makes something easier for me. Each day I put something difficult off in an effort to not embarrass myself.

There is one thing I do know, one thing I know for sure. I will experience instantaneous love in the near future. I have been lucky enough to know the other forms of love; I have learned to love from my family, I have fallen in love with my wife and soon I will have the gift of loving someone from the first time we meet. This is an aspect of my nature that I am struggling to comprehend. When I write, I write with skepticism. I don’t really trust anybody. And that is why I will attempt to end this story bleakly. For no other reason than to counteract the warmth I feel inside.

There is only one thing to do and that is escape. I am not going to run away from this of course, but you should at least try.

That is what I urge you two to do. Gerald. I am writing myself into this story so I can give you one last chance. Run and take the doctor with you. You will have to be fast and quick, for this is an impossible situation. I am controlling everything you do. But don’t despair; there is hope in the opening of this story.

Goodbye and good luck.

Your author, Gareth Doyle.”

That is the end of my diagnosis. I found this letter on my desk this morning. It could have been written by anybody, not necessarily this Mr. Doyle. But for some reason deep inside myself I believe every word and I want you to take me with you. Please Gerald, take me with you.”

I felt sick. Part of me was still obviously worried about my condition, and this was not the answer I had been expecting. The other thing that had brought on this nausea was the sense that this doctor was right. All that he had told me was true. And if it was then I only existed as part of a short story.

The doctor passed me a glass of water, clearly understanding my thought process. Surely he had gone through a similar experience only but a few hours earlier. As the sickness passed, it was replaced by anger. Who was this man to take away my ability to read just because he felt insecure about becoming a father? And now what, he still controls me, in fact he has just made me feel sick. What a bastard. And then for a split second I thought over the aspect that he has just called himself a bastard. The nausea returned and I threw up.

“How?” I spluttered.

“I don’t know. All I know is that you are the lead in this tale and that if I leave your side I will be doomed to be a subsidiary character in this story, to be permanently confined to this small room, pleading with you every time this is re-read.”

I took a deep breath and pulled myself together, I spat out what vomit remained in my mouth and turned to face the doctor.

“As much as I despise this Gareth for putting me in this position, we are left with only one choice. And that is to take his advice and run.”

“Okay. Then let us go.”

That is when we stood up and with heavy hearts left the examining room. Neither us knew what to do. Only that we had to escape these words. And with no time to lose we picked up our pace. As we reached the reception a nurse cried out to the doctor calling him back for an urgent matter, a patient had just gone into cardiac arrest. He turned to me and said, “That author is trying to be clever and force me back into the hospital, there is no patient dying.”

I hoped that his assumption was correct and ran out into the daylight.

He was proved right almost immediately. I ran across the main high street in front of the hospital, I was no longer afraid of death. The author wanted us alive and these cars would not hurt us. Horns were blasted out and vehicles turned direction in quick succession of one another, but I was spared. We reached the other side and turned into an alleyway. The doctor a few years older than myself started to slow down. I turned to see him bent over double trying to catch his breath. Behind him a man cloaked in shadow aimed a gun at him and fired. The bullet burst threw his chest making him stumble towards me. I grabbed him in my arms and looked up again for the killer, he was gone.

“How could I have been so stupid?” said the doctor.

“What do you mean?”

“It is you he wants alive, I am disposal.”

“He could kill me at any time. I’m not sure I will last.”

“I believe in you Gerald, you must go. Remember what he said in his letter. A clue lies in the opening sentence of this story. What did you think about this morning? How would a story like this be told? Don’t let him win.”

Blood was now coming out of the doctor’s mouth. He would die soon. He continued to urge me into solving the riddle. I scrambled to think about how a story like this would be told, how it would start. The doctor’s eyes closed and he stopped breathing. I laid him to the ground. I would have to grieve for him later, for now I had to run.

I came to the end of the alleyway. I could feel a presence smothering me and quickly decided to enter a door to an office block to my left. I ran through the deserted reception area and entered a lift. I pressed button number 14, destination the top floor and waited.

What was the clue in the opening of this story?

Then it came to me. This story is about me, a man who has lost the ability to read. Such a story could only really be told in the first person. If that was the case then I was talking about myself in the past tense, and if that was true then I must be able to read again. I can give myself that power. I can do whatever I like; I can force my escape, because I will survive.

The elevator doors binged at me and opened. I ran to the fire escape and climbed to the top of the building. I was in control and in about a second’s time I would escape these author’s words. I ran again as fast as I could and jumped into the air and off of the building, the wind rustling in my ears, and the author long behind me. As my face raced towards the pavement, I made myself yell out, “You can stop writing now.”

The 14 Year Hustle - 3rd Chapter - 1988

2010-07-05T03:30:00.001-07:00

1988

Gable didn’t sleep that night as one year faded into memory and the world woke up to another. He strutted around the grounds of the mansion going through every possible scenario; had Scarlet seen his prowess at the pool table and would she immediately run to the Lazy Duke mouth open? Or had she simply just stumbled past the doorway half embroiled in sleep and one hour old drink? It was a useless exercise that only drove him to more rum. In the end he decided to brush it off if the scene was ever mentioned. He was confident that Scarlet suspected nothing but this did not stop him pacing the halls of the mansion trying to find something to occupy his mind.

His paranoid wanderings led him to the library. Since arriving at the mansion two years ago he had only frequented this room a handful of times. His pragmatic mind had often mused of the uselessness of the room; the books had lay dormant for years. Dead skin dating back hundreds of years had rested in the binds of these novels, giving the room an archaic musk that in Gable’s current state felt calming. He began to peruse the shelves of books, wondering if the Lazy Duke or Scarlet had ever read any of these stories or if this was just a room to show off to the dinner guests that never came. His fingers flickered across the Dickens and Austens’ until he reached the far corner of the room and his hand hit a large brown book poking out from the shelf. You could safely assume there was a good chance this was the last book to be read in this room. However, when that was would be a much more difficult proposition.

The book was entitled ‘A Collection of Old Portuguese Folk Tales’. There was no author or editor inscribed on the cover and the publishing house’ logo had long succumbed to the travails of age. Gable tottered over the book for a few moments before sliding it out from the shelf, blowing the dust from the top and falling into one of the grand armchairs scattered about the library. The book made a comical creak as it was opened, the weight felt good in his grip, comforting. For a second the sensation of the hardback in his hands made him recall all the junior years he had spent reading Enid Blyton on his living room rug with his father perusing the paper whilst resting his legs upon his sons back. Gable shook himself out of his sentimentalism and turned to the contents page. The book contained ten tales dating back hundreds of years. Gable was drunk and in no frame of mind to start from the beginning, instead he began to thumb his way through the stories. Many of these folk tales were accompanied by a crude illustration depicting the big moment or reveal of the tale. Towards the end of the book Gable came across a page that’s corner had been folded over marking that story for future reference. The story was entitled ‘Stone Soup’. Before the story began proper, a few historical facts were listed, this had been the case for all the other tales, except this was the first time Gable had made a point to focus his eyes on the page at hand and read. The facts were in keeping with the vagueness of the old book and revealed nothing in the way of dates or supposed authors. The only solid facts, if that, told of how the tale originated in the town of Almeirim and sometimes went by the title ‘The Magic Stone’, this folk tale apparently took many forms sometimes involving more characters or different settings but the essence of the story was always the same. Gable arched his spine and sunk himself down deeper into the armchair. As the New Year’s dawn shone through the window Gable began to read.

‘Stone Soup’ was the story of a traveller who on this day was wandering through a forest. He was very hungry and had not eaten a hot meal for months, surviving instead on the fruits of the forest. As his hunger weighed on his thoughts he came to a clearing in the woods. On the far side of the clearing was a cottage, the chimney was producing a ream of smoke and chickens were bobbing about the modest garden out front. The vision was inviting, but the traveller’s appearance was not, he looked terrible, his clothes were in tatters and he smelt awful. There was no way the occupant of the cottage would give him food and a roof over his head for the night. He looked around at his surroundings and after a little searching came across a medium-sized stone, completely smooth in texture and slightly red in colour. He smiled to himself and put the stone in his pocket and walked over to the front door of the cottage. After knocking several times the door was opened by an old woman, she asked the traveller what he wanted, he told her he had been on the road for many months and was in desperate need of some food and shelter and perhaps a chance to warm himself by her fire. The old woman, who was not used to visitors all the way out here told the man she was not going to let somebody she had never met before come into her home, she did not want to be robbed. The traveller had expected this response and told the old woman that he was not expecting her to offer all these things to him for free, in return he would cook and clean, in fact he would cook her the greatest meal she had ever eaten. The old woman told the man his ego was almost as big as his appetite and enquired how he could be so confident of such a grand claim. The traveller reached into his coat pocket and produced the red stone he had collected earlier. He told the old woman that this was a magic stone and if added to hot water would make the most wonderful soup. He continued to elaborate on the powers of the stone in such a manner as to convince the old woman that this tall tale was genuine. Minutes later he was inside the cottage warming his behind on the fire. That evening he began to make his soup by placing the stone in a large pan and heating it on the stove with water. After a few moments he casually sipped the soup and told the old woman that it could be improved with a little salt and some herbs. The old woman had no good reason to refuse the travellers request and pointed him in the direction of her parlour. Some more time passed and the traveller suggested that with some tomatoes and other vegetables the soup could just possibly be the best he had ever made, by this time the old woman was falling for his patter and the smell of the herbs was making her ageing stomach twist and turn. She gave him access to everything in the kitchen. An hour later the traveller had managed to lay a feast fit for several kings out on the old woman’s kitchen table, the soup was accompanied by warm bread, chicken legs, fresh salad and cold beer. The old woman ate almost as fast as the traveller, the two of them silent throughout the eating of the meal. When all that was left on the table was clean plates, chicken bones and empty tankards the two laid back and let their bellies rest. That night the traveller slept like a new born and in the morning the old woman thanked him heartily for making her the greatest meal she had ever eaten, she even went so far as to say she could now die happy. The traveller thanked her for the hospitality she had shown and went on his way. When he had re-entered the forest he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the smooth red stone and without a seconds thought threw it over his shoulder and continued on his way.

The story seemed vaguely familiar. Gable turned the page of the book and saw some more information presented within an old fashioned border. The inscription inside told the reader the moral of the story; in the case of ‘Stone Soup’ the tale told us how if we work together and both contribute we will get the best out of a situation. Gable scoffed at this, he saw the story in a far darker way than intended. To him the story was a simple illustration of a con, plain and simple. The traveller had seen a susceptible target and taken her for what he needed, in this instance food, but it could have just as easily been money. Reading the story had made him uncomfortable, combined with the pool table exposure earlier in the night the previous year’s calm guilt-free time was over. The coincidence of finding this book and this single story being marked out spooked Gable. He slid the book back, making sure it didn’t poke out this time. It was as if the library was saying ‘told you so’. Gable shuddered, gave the finger to no one in particular and left the room. In the oncoming years Gable would only enter the library if the circumstance demanded it, which luckily for him was very rare.

A month later Gable was taking his regular early morning walk. Mist was rising off the lawn and forming a cloak around him making it hard to see the mansion from the far side of the grounds. So far 1988 had been extremely quiet. The three of them pretty much keeping themselves to themselves, even the Lazy Duke had given Gable numerous days off, telling him he was tired or not in the mood. Gable was not one to probe and had pretty much done as he was told in these cold January weeks. Yet in these days off, he often wondered how his host’s marriage came about and in fact worked, on the surface they seemed at odds with each other and Gable often doubted this union would ever go the distance. However on other occasions there seemed a companionship in the space between their two bodies that Gable had never seen between a couple before. Still, this companionship was not always present and months, just like these he wandered through now, would go by in almost impenetrable silence. For all of this he did find himself missing the three of them together; it had been so long since he had had friends, whatever the pretence, and he was eager to see the three of them sat down at a table.

Gable was not exactly the kind of man who instigated a party or a gathering; essentially he didn’t see himself as fun. So how was he going to initiate some interest in the house? As his walk led him back to the house he could think of only one thing to do and it wasn’t something fun. He had put it off for over a year now and he guessed he might as well get it over and done with. This resignation to what he had to do slid down from his brain to the depths of his stomach and eventually his feet, making each step towards the mansion heavy. He had long ago figured and ordered events out in his head, but for some unfathomable reason had refused or simply decided not to tell the second part of his tale. Maybe for the first time in his life he did not want to tell any more lies or maybe he just didn’t want to lie to the Lazy Duke and Scarlet. He looked up at the house and caught the twirl of Scarlet’s blond hair as she turned to look at him. He raised his hand to wave hello and then reluctantly trotted towards her.

The Fabricated Story of Gable - Part Two.

Post Connor was a time of ghosts. I had to lay low for several reasons, firstly I didn’t want to be associated with the dead man for fear of interest from the police and secondly, I was fully aware that there might be reprisals from Connor’s associates, who were numerous. Luckily, hardly anyone knew my full name and the various addresses I had made my home in the last few years were either squats or bedsits. It seemed ironic that all the times Connor had referred to me as a sack of shit had ended up distancing my link to his death. And so for the six months after Connor’s death I lived in the shadows of London’s bustling population. The ghouls of the city occasionally either greeting me or chasing me down deeper into the gutter, at first I fled and then as each week passed I became one of these ghouls. My pale face hidden in the dark shadows of every street and alleyway ready to prey on another poor wide-eyed kid leaving a train station and entering the capitol for the first time, with every month I feared I had become Connor, had become everything I had fought and as the late seventies came around and everyone else seemed to be stuck in a dark movie theatre watching Star Wars I finally entered the light.

Not for the first time I considered leaving the city, would my father even recognise me now, I doubted it. I looked ten years older than twenty-one. The bad living had not only caught up with me but was starting to lap me. I knew that my father would have taken me back; he was just about the kindest, most down-to-earth human being I had ever known. The simple question ‘why?’ always loomed over my head like a thundercloud in a cheap cartoon. Why had I left him? Why had I deemed him a fool? Who was I to judge him? There was no way I was going back to my father a failure. If I was ever to return to his embrace it was as a success. I’ve always quantified success with money, a shallow assumption I know, it’s not that I am not self aware it’s just you show me an alternative, I for one have never seen a real alternative. The only way I knew how to gain access to cash was petty crime. Dad would have been proud.

I hooked up with several crews over the next three years. Suffice to say Connor’s fist was not the last to crumple my nose. Fights were common, but I like to think I gave as good as I got. For example; the first fight I was involved in since the demise of Connor was on a cold winter’s night. I was awaiting a drop off of an important package in a pub, it was annoyingly busy which had been something my contact and I had been trying to avoid. I had never met the contact, all I knew was that he was a Frenchmen, for we had spoken on the phone, and that the package was a set of plans to a warehouse I was planning to rob. These details aren’t really that important, what is important was that the Frenchman entered the pub in a foul mood, it was apparent on his face when he arrived in the pub half an hour late, thus also putting me in a bad mood. My temper had made itself apparent frequently in those months, something to do with having taken so much crap from Connor for such a long time, and what I hadn’t had the guts, gall, courage or whatever you want to call it to do to him I did that night to that Frenchman. He stood at the foot of the table and reeled off a stack of lies and excuses for his lateness and the bad choice of location to meet, slowly twisting the blame around in my direction. I snapped. Standing up I was a good foot taller than my contact and this gave my pint glass extra momentum as it came crashing down on his skull. He made a vain attempt to fight back, but by then I had shattered his jaw. Blood cascaded down his forehead in torrents, the punters in the pub seemed too scared to interfere and in hindsight a good decision was made by them for I was on a rampage. This fucking frog was gonna receive every ounce of pain Connor had ever inflicted on me twice fold. I kicked him in the testicles driving him to the floor before grabbing a steaming plate of steak and chips to my left, like a demented circus clown I drove the food custard pie style into the man’s bloody face. I lifted the plate back up. By now the Frenchman was struggling to stay conscious, blood from his head and the rare steak that was laid across his face covered the floor, however his humiliation was not over for I was not finished. Next I smashed the plate into shards and taking the sharpest piece drove it through his right palm impaling him to the pub floor. The reason for this I couldn’t tell you and with adrenaline pumping through my veins I walked out of that pub with my head held high.

Almost ten years later I hang my head in shame. Violence like booze seemed like an answer, but really it was only short term. I feel I am a man that will never learn his lesson; I am doomed to repeat the same mistakes again and again. Most of us live lives of repetition; the same faces greeted every day, the same chores to be completed on a daily basis, the same inane television programmes to be watched, the same sexual movements to be ground out every Wednesday. I live a life to some of unpredictability; this is simply not the case. At the end of every month I was in the same position I was in at the beginning of the previous month, broke, hungry and alone and every time my solution to this problem was to seek out a Frenchman. I’m incapable of being rational when needed and I have no doubt that I’ll cross paths with another Frenchman in the years to come. I can only hope that I can act differently, but I cannot be sure.

There were many other fights like that, some I lost some I won. I guess, It was a beating that led me to this fair town. That though is the conclusion to my tale, for now it is six years previous to that misadventure. A new decade, and whilst the eighties were in their infancy I drunkenly came across a man called Ford who would teach me my downfall. I am speaking rather obliquely, I apologise.

Ford was the most charismatic man I had ever met. After mixing with the scum of the capital for so many years it came as a refreshing change to talk to someone with a sense of the theatrics about them. Ford would go on to educate me in literature, diction and poise. These skills would at times come in useful in my line of work, but at the time I deemed them merely frivolities in my limited repertoire of life skills. We were introduced in a pool hall of all places. Dank with chalk smoke and reeking of cigarettes I was introduced to a man who apparently liked to invest unwisely, a man who liked risk and boy did he like to tell you about it. Ford proceeded to perform for me that night, he chatted flamboyantly whilst demonstrating a series of trick shots before my very eyes. The reason I wanted his money never came up, not once. It was as if my talent at listening would determine if he would put up the stake for my rather humble operation. “I am a hustler my dear boy” he began. “Surely you must have gathered that by now. I feed off others, rather like a vampire. I come out mostly at night, find an innocent victim and suck them dry, in my case for cash not blood, nevertheless they can leave me pale and exhausted.” He proceeded to laugh to himself at his simplistic metaphor. To me at the time I thought it inspired, it appealed to my childhood love of monsters and ghouls and to my adult love of crime and misery.

“ It is a profession that I simply adore; I’ve been sucking folks dry for nigh on twenty years now. And I’ll tell you, I’ve never tired, not once, of the feeling that sweeps through my bones when I turn the tails on my victim and start potting balls. Ha, that feels good. However, I am too good, shall we say, and I have too much blood money on my hands and that, my dear fellow, is why you are here.”

Over the next year I spent a lot of time in that pool hall with Ford, he was never really a friend, more like an acquaintance or if I’m honest, entertainment. He was gracious enough to teach me the basic rules of pool; my skills, however, have remained just as basic as the said rules unfortunately. He told me in different words than these how he was a washed-up actor. Twenty years prior he was apparently on the brink of stardom, a darling of the West-End. He had been a young, good-looking man, stood before me now it was clear that his youth had ran to the hills but his looks had remained and he had gained an immeasurable charm in the intervening years, something I figured helped him gain the company of the opposite sex on a regular basis. The excitement of being a name, however a brief period of time it was, had led Ford into the realm of every cliché a young up and coming performer tip-toes through. Although he would never admit it himself, his cocksureness had led him to many a married lady’s changing room and consequently the critics and producers turned on him. Of course his take was that the West-End was not ready for a performer of his magnitude, in some mixed-up fantasy he figured the casting agents of his youth would seek him out in the years to come pleading for him to return to the stage once more. In this dream he would look up from the game he was playing and simply wink at them, pot the black and exit stage right leaving his hustle dumbfounded as well as the agent. These were the only stories he told where I humoured him, in everything else he seemed wise. A fan of company, Ford frequented the pubs and bars of the city to the point where they became his home and the patrons his family. He taught himself pool, a game he could play well, maybe not the best, but when put up alongside his acting skills brought him a pretty penny. These hustles, in his words, ‘so gallantly performed’, only brought him so much money, certainly not enough to keep his women in the fashion they were used to and so he had turned to gambling with crime. He bankrolled many of my schemes in those years and then one time when I popped into the pool hall in passing to give Ford the courtesy of a hello he was nowhere to be found. I asked around, but no one seemed to know whom I was referring to. I gave them a description of this never to be forgotten character but it all fell on glazed expressions and deaf ears. I often wonder what happened to Ford; no doubt he became interwined with his own mythology to the point where he lived as only a fantasy can, in dreams. Ford was gone, and with Ford gone the blood and desperation returned.

In truth I’m not sure I was ever good at being part of the so-called underworld. I have been in many a scuffle, the incident I recounted earlier was one of the few I came out of victorious and that had a lot to do with the element of surprise. I’ll give you a small piece of advice in case you ever find yourself in a position where violence is the only outcome; Always hit first. That’s it. I guess that sounds patronizing, but to be honest it is good advice. So many times it comes down to bravado; who is really willing to hurt the other, I mean really hurt. If you can show that in your eyes you’ve already won, if you’ve done this and the fight is still to commence then hit the bastard first.

Anyway, for every year that passed my body experienced two. Drink and broken ribs came in pairs and the gutter was only inches away wherever I lay my head to sleep. I dreamt regularly of my father enveloping my childlike self in his big arms, every time I awoke I felt a deep disappointment with myself, every year that passed took me further and further from him. I always felt like I was swimming underwater and every so often I would break to the surface, just for a short while though. Then in the real world bad luck would strike and I would drift back down to the depths of the ocean. This haze of life consumed me for the next few years. My time in London ended with a beating that nearly killed me. I lost an eye as you can see and any self-confidence that hadn’t flew south in the last few years. And so in some kind of self-realisation I guessed or realised the capital was going to kill me sooner or later and I headed north in search of the water’s surface.

The Lazy Duke and Scarlet once again looked at Gable in silence after the second part of his story came to an end. The Duke hadn’t found the yarn as boys own as he had expected and his mind fluttered through possible comments he could say but failed to come up with anything even remotely appropriate. Scarlet bowed her head a single time and then looked Gable dead in the eye. As a wife she knew her husband couldn’t emote his feelings and took on the mantle of speaking for both of them. “Do you think you’ve reached the surface?”

Gable smiled appreciatively at the way Scarlet had kept the schoolboy metaphor going and replied, “For now, for now.”

“Do you see yourself sinking again?”

“It’s not a case of seeing myself sinking, it’s just inevitable, in many ways my self pity is my curse.”

“You seem to tell your tale in a much more literate manner than your experience or education would suggest.”

“I guess I’ve always aspired to being a better man than I really am. In all those years of trying to get to sleep covered in bruises I’ve always dreamed a different life for myself. Something quiet like this I guess.”

“Never doubt that you are not the man you want to be. All I see before me is a better man.”

As the conversation reached its natural conclusion with that heartfelt comment so Gable truly fell in love with Scarlet. The Lazy Duke continued to sit in silence still fumbling for something to say, eventually he settled on, “Fancy a game of pool?”

The 14 Year Hustle - 2nd Chapter - 1987

2010-07-05T03:28:00.000-07:00

1987

The January snows cloaked the grounds of the mansion in a white haze that Gable made a point of succumbing to. He had initially figured his days of wandering had come to an end when he settled down in this town; his gnarled feet ready to retire to an upright position. This turned out not to be the case, as once a day first thing in the morning, before starting work in the pool room, Gable would head to the forest, breathing in the fresh country air with each step.

As the winter winds blew harshly across his face he let out a heavy sigh, something that was becoming a habit over the last few months. The sigh was really his mind’s way of exorcising the guilt and torment that lay within him. He had rarely let the predicament he was in enter his thoughts during these last few months. The sighs let the thoughts out in the morning and like an evil spirit they would return during the night. However, as the day went on he simply became the half man he had created. For now this was not in any way a problem, for Gable loved his current life and was enjoying the company of his two new best friends. He let out a second sigh for good luck as he entered the mansion to start a good hard days work.

Winter progressed and for the first time in his life Gable had a routine to wallow in. Each day Gable would automatically fall into the habit of bad pool playing. At first he had found this difficult over long periods of time, he was used to building to a crescendo over a period of hours. Now he had to train himself to end the day with a loss. The Lazy Duke liked to end each day on a high and Gable respected that wish as much as he could. The counter side to what appeared to be badly thought out tactics and sloppy shooting was the fact that Gable also had to seem somewhat of a challenge, an opponent up to the task the Duke had set him, a worthy employee as it were. So occasionally Gable would make sure he won a few games so as to keep the competition tense, of course half his shots would look like flukes of luck.

The days more often than not were filled with laughter as the two men ribbed each other over a simple miss or an amusing rebound as eventually the eight ball would fall into the far pocket after bouncing off the sides of the table four or five times. Scarlet too, moved from an object of desire to a friend as the second year moved out of infancy. Gable’s initial schoolboy crush had disappeared to be replaced by a genuine admiration for this woman. The first female friend he had ever had, he knew the desire would return at some point in the future, but for now he slept and ate with companions.

The original bet was paid off quite quickly and with board and living expenses being taken care of by his host, Gable did as his verbal contract instructed and gambled all his wages either in the grand poolroom or down the hill at the pub. On the rare occasion he won a game he would either spend this rare luxury on a rum for himself and when he could persuade him, a rum for the Duke as well. It was during these odd occurrences that Gable in a completely non-arrogant manner suspected the Lazy Duke of looking up to him. Gable figured this a strange outcome for a man with so much, but in reality the Duke was one step up from an infant, a man of no seeming responsibility and extremely naïve in the ways of life and Gables world-weariness fascinated him. To Gable this puzzling idolisation seemed completely misplaced. His tale was not a romantized gangster movie; if the Duke had been a character in Gable’s tales he would no doubt be filling his pants with piss. Although Gable kept his anecdotes as gritty as possible he could do nothing to displace the Duke’s admiration. He hoped that when he felt ready to tell him the second part of his story things would change.

One day, as the Lazy Duke and Gable descended the hill towards the pub, Gable felt the first rays of sunshine shooting through the heavy-clouded sky and realised this was the first time he had ever welcomed the onset of summer. Excitement hit him then like a child on the first day of advent, he simply couldn’t wait for summer to arrive. Last summer had rushed past him unnoticed as the structure of his new life was built around him. During his childhood years he had despised the summer months simply because he hated how he looked in shorts, his lanky frame highlighted to all the other boys and girls in the schoolyard. To this day he still refused to wear shorts, preferring instead to swelter in his trousers. Now, he felt different, rejuvenated, looking around himself everything seemed brighter than it had ever been, from the blades of green grass to the Lazy Dukes rosy cheeks. It was as if during this summer everything would be the reverse of his schooldays, in the sense that the world would be highlighted, aglow in a way only he could appreciate. His optimism was quickly shunted aside by the realisation that he, Gable and his drab, grey appearance would always be left one step behind, never truly allowed to escape his origins. He knew his mind was playing tricks on his senses, so he let out several sighs in succession; The Duke gave him a strange look, but as always shrugged off its potential importance.

Summer arrived in full and swept away any self-doubt Gable felt towards himself. His walks became a joy rather than a way off pacing of the guilt. His daily sighs also disappeared from habit and Gable began to enjoy life. That summer the three of them spent the light evenings out on the grounds sipping home-made lemonade in-between dozing off. The air was close and Gable’s body couldn’t help but slow down. Pool playing too, became less frequent as July made way for August. The mansion was old and rather than shield you from the heat it seemed to intensify it, especially in the poolroom with its large bay windows. It felt like a God had turned a giant magnifying glass in his direction with the rays aimed directly at Gable’s sweating brow.

Gable found his mind empty, unable to drum up anything of use during these long months. Whether it be opinions, jokes or complements. He chose instead to simply remain quiet, never in an aloof way, simply in a respectful manner. Scarlet and the Duke knew this unspoken mannerism and let him be, it was true that they were intrigued to hear the other half of his tale, but they also knew that life had been hard for their guest and did not want to push him into something, time was certainly not of the essence.

Gable slept a lifetime that summer and by late September he felt he had finally recharged his batteries from the long spell of late nights, broken bones, drink and insignificant sexual encounters. The summer in every sense of the word was the longest lie in Gable had ever had. In the years to come if asked to recall a memory from middle of the year 1987 Gable’s brow would furrow and his mouth would occasionally open, but no sound would be forthcoming.

As the leaves began to fall, the three became very comfortable with each other. Without drumming up a rota or planning the day-to-day activities such as shower times, afternoon naps or time for tea, the newly formed gang just naturally worked around each other, always in sync with each other’s movements or needs. Scarlet would take an uninterrupted shower followed immediately by the Duke and finally Gable. If one felt tired, they could slump off unquestioned and return later on for dinner. Tea was made and drank without ceremony. And this is how the three lived together as autumn began.

As the air separated so the three slowly became more active. Pool games were played into the late hours, now with much more ferocity on the Duke’s part. Scarlet too kept busy by writing eagerly in her diary. Still, a silent politeness pervaded between them, it wouldn’t be until the end of the year until they truly felt like they knew each other, for this was a year of firsts for all of them. As winter closed the yearly circle, Gable welcomed the onset of Christmas, if only for a way to forge the gap in the distance between them all. He hadn’t bought a gift for anyone since childhood when he got his father some scandalous biography of one of the Hollywood elite. Even though it was only early November, he had already decided what to buy each of them. And so over the next few weeks he pocketed some of his earnings, surreptitiously disguising his bets with the Duke to masterful effect and as Decembers inevitable onset arrived so Gable walked one afternoon to the nearest town and purchased a beautifully bound diary for the year of ’88 and with his insider’s knowledge procured a slender willow-made pool cue from a antique type sports store. Happy with his purchases he bounded back to the mansion. He found the joy of giving an alien experience; he had taken for so long and even though the money for his host’s gifts had been acquired from them, doing what he loved doing and came as no chore, it didn’t matter. The books he had bought for his father all those years ago had come from months of saved pocket money and wasn’t this the same?

The twenty-five-day build up to Christmas was almost unbearable to Gable he so wanted to see their faces light up. For a man whose living came from keeping secrets he struggled with containing the glee he found at having bought two thoughtful gifts for his hosts. Disappointment was not an option and as Christmas Eve finally passed and the best morning of Gable’s troubled life arrived, their faces truly did light, the loneliness dispelled, Scarlet curled up in an armchair and made notes in the book, whilst the Duke asked Gable almost in song if he fancied working on Christmas Day. Gable held back his emotions and led the way. The Lazy Duke named his new cue the Lady, which Gable laughed out loud at, it was so like the Duke to feel the need to pompously name an inanimate object. They played until the smell of roasted turkey swept through the halls of the mansion and into their nostrils, tempting them to the table where they spent the rest of the day and the following week eating and drinking.

As with summer, the week would prove to be a blur to Gable in later years. The Lazy Duke vowed not to drink for another year, which he admirably kept to. Nevertheless for all the half-hearted regrets that the New Year brought they were happy, Gable more so than the others. He felt like he could finally call the mansion a home and as the others went to bed on the morning of the next year Gable toasted the rafters of the mansion and thanked God for where he had been welcomed. After the rum was consumed he picked up the Lady and played pool against himself. He played with such art and precision it would have caused gasps if an audience had been present. The cue twisted and turned across the felt as Gable’s focus knocked every pool ball into the six pockets. That was when he did hear a gasp, looking up he saw Scarlet still drunk looking him dead in the eye. How long had she been stood there? Was she drunk enough to comprehend the situation at hand? If she suspected foul play would she tell the Lazy Duke or prefer to keep the serenity that all their lives were grateful for? Gable didn’t know. Scarlet slurred a goodnight and ascended the stairs seemingly unaware of the real Gable that lurked within their walls. And that was when Gable let out his biggest sigh of the year.

The 14 Year Hustle - 1st Chapter - 1986

2010-03-24T05:13:00.001-07:00

1986

Gable got beaten half to death by the same three old men in the years ’85 and ’86. They had the common decency to take a break to sing ‘Auld Langs Ayne’ before kicking his head across the street. His pulp of a body followed unwittingly, every cell rushing to the surface to scream for a reprieve. Gable’s mind, however, was fighting a different battle - that of shame. Firstly, he was getting his head kicked in by three pensioners who were actually wheezing as their shoes hit his spine and secondly, why had he forced the Loser into defending his manhood? This all raced through Gable’s mind in microseconds just before he lost his left eye.

Three hours earlier Gable had two eyes, no bruises and several shots of dark rum sliding down his gullet. He looked around at the pool hall, knowing already that the establishment would not be busy. It was New Year’s Eve, most people were with friends or family already on their way to starting 1986 with an evil hangover. A hint of self-loathing sprinkled across Gable’s skin as he ordered another rum. Why was he alone at this time of year? Why was he in a filthy pool hall trying to scam some other lonely soul out of the last of their savings? So what? They could go back to their desperate, depressed other half with another shitty excuse as to why the start of the new year is going be no different from the rest of their crappy half lived miserable lives. “Stop it!” he whispered to himself as he banged the shot on the table and swallowed.

This was the best time of year to hit a place like this. The people smacking coloured balls around wooden tables on this night at this time were serious about the game and that meant they were essentially chickens ready to be plucked. Gable laughed to himself as he imagined the dozen or so men in the room as mutant hens parading around the tables with pool cues grasped in their folded-over wings, clucking to each other with every well-played shot. Gable’s eyes surveyed the room. What a shit hole, the walls actually looked like they were stained with human excrement. London wasn’t exactly full of pool halls; snooker parlours were dotted across the capitol but Gable’s game was pool. He knew the game intimately, it could be considered his companion for it was the only aspect of his life he could rely on, he trusted the movement of balls, the angles, the roll of the felt, the way the cue felt in his grasp. To play pool he normally went to pubs but on New Year’s Eve the crowds had pushed him into a place such as this. “Where is the Loser? Where is the Loser?” chanted Gable in a nursery rhyme fashion. Starting from the right there were four teenagers huddled round a table more interested in talking about the barmaids ample assets than the game. All of them wearing a subtle variation of the same tracksuit, each of them made up of vacant eyes and a ‘C’mon then’ sneer plastered across their acne-ridden faces. Gable surmised that pickings would be slim from this bunch, he mused over the theory that they were all empty shells telepathically controlled by a track-suited teenage blob hidden somewhere in the depths of the city. He moved on. The next table had what seemed like Frankenstein’s monster hitting the cue ball up and down the table in violent jabs, Gable swiftly moved on. The following table had three old men playing a game at a snails pace, Gable considered it for a second before looking for bigger game. Residing on two empty tables to the left were four middle-aged men who looked like they worked in the city. Gable could hear one of the pack saying, “This is better than those posh extortionate bars with all that nigger hip hop shit.” From that comment Gable decided to assume they were ignoramuses and approached their table and tonight’s Loser.

The taste of blood in Gable’s mouth changed to something thicker. He was quite certain he could taste his own eye. Shards of his glasses protruded from his face making him look like the devil’s pincushion. He wanted to cry, but he was never going to give these old bastards the satisfaction. He tried to blurt out expletives but all that came out of his mouth was blood and bubbles of mucus. His arms seemingly acting of their own free will tried to crawl down the street. The old men stood back to let this pathetic attempt at survival play its self out before approaching for yet more violence. Gable prayed for unconsciousness and God listened but looked away.

“Give me a chance to win my money back. Double or quits?” slurred Gable.

“Jeez, you must be drunk. That’s six games in a row you’ve lost. What are you a fucking retard or something?” jeered the Loser.

The three old men belly laughed as if Richard Pryor were doing stand-up in the room. Apart from Gable and the Loser’s personal bet, money was being passed around between the onlookers who were really basically the suits, the three old men and a few bar flies amalgamated. The Loser was right on one count; Gable was drunk. He had just come back from the toilet where he had spent five minutes staring into his stained reflection. The loathing had returned. Staring back at him was a haggard thirty-year-old man, badly shaved, his dark brown hair greased back over his skull, looking the worse off for drink and wearing huge spectacles that dominated his thin bony face. This was not a life, where were his friends, his family, his girl? He was going to walk away from here with what? A hundred quid? And spend it on what? Rent, booze and fast food?

The rums accelerated the hustle. Instead of disguising his shots as flukes or blind luck, he started to play wildly ambitious shots slamming his cue ball around the table as if this were some kind of exhibition match. The three old men started to clock on to the situation and displeasure with events was evident on their wrinkled mugs. While Gable was despising his life in the gents they had just clubbed together to put all their money on the Loser unaware even with Gable’s drunken play that a hustle was going down. The city slickers put it in the pot gladly; they had arranged a mark up with all those involved and what with the Loser currently raking it in from the drunk they expected a fruitful start to the New Year. When Gable collected his winnings he knew he’d blown it. A deathly silence pervaded the pool hall and as he exited “fuck yous” attempted to fill the void. The only group not swearing were the three old men, they just collected their coats.

Like a slug Gable was leaving a trail of himself across the pavement. New Year’s revellers walked on by trying to pretend the world wasn’t really like this. Gable had always known the world was really like this and just as this profundity started to alleviate his pain he vomited. You’d think your body would forget the fact you have had too much to drink after your shell had been crushed. The amount of pain that the retching brought down on Gable’s bruised ribs was immense and caused him to scream out in agony, letting sick flow down his front. Then finally, the blackness arrived and Gable disappeared into the only realm he was ever happy to walk.

Gable very much liked wearing an eye patch. It had the childish effect of making him feel like a pirate, he also dumbly figured it made him more attractive. Whilst in hospital he had grown a beard. He had never gone without a shave more than a couple of days; even when all his razor blades had blunted and money wasn’t forthcoming he had managed to rid his face of hair. In his line of work a beard seemed to suggest something the opposite of trustworthy. However, now he was horizontal 24 hours a day he did not see the reason to bother, plus it helped contribute to his new pirate look.

These frivolous thoughts helped him make light of having lost an eye. After the initial shock of seeing a dark red hole where his eye had been he realised he had given up on his personal appearance many moons ago and wavered the various replacement options he was offered in favour of the simple jet-black patch. His look preyed little on his mind; what did taunt him, what did come to him in his dreams were the three old men. Their hard shiny boots arriving at his eyeballs out of nowhere, every night in and out of consciousness these boots would fly at his face like a fifties 3-D motion picture, summoning up that night to his thoughts, robbing him of idle musings. What plagued him most about that New Year’s Eve was the shame. He used to be a great pool hustler, he could go undetected for years on end, returning again and again to the same bar, every time taking more and more money from the dumb patrons that inhabited the place. Now look at him, a washed-up bum waiting to be discharged into the city that had forgotten him, the city that made a fool of him.

Gable had never been one for television and although the nurses turned it on in the morning he only ever gave it a cursory glance, preferring instead the view of the capital from his window. London had been his home for sixteen years and he was only now realising with a heavy tired sigh that maybe a change was in order.

He’d arrived in the city aged fourteen surrounded by a myriad of different faces, having left school and his dad a long way back down the train track. He held a bag with a change of underwear and a toothbrush in one hand and a pool cue in the other, no case, just a pale boy holding a wooden stick and his pants with no idea how to get out of Euston Station.

His father had wanted him to be an actor, just like his hero Richard Burton. Gable had always been a natural mimic and seemed to thrive on stage. His dad who could often be found at the picture house had dreams of his son taking Hollywood by storm. Gable did not see things this way and preferred to take the local fleapits by storm. He had always looked older than his age and cheating his way into snooker or pool clubs never seemed to be a problem, and what with the entertainment he provided it never really seemed to matter anyway. He never drank, that came later. What he could do with a pool cue became legendary, the old boys quickly started to champion him as some kind of prodigy. His dad, a quiet Welshman, hated these grungy cesspits and the infamy that he figured his son was attracting and thus never supported his path. Within the year Gable was on a train bound for London. At the same time his dad sat in a dark cinema watching a screening of ‘Where Eagles Dare’ blissfully unaware.

How naïve Gable remembered himself being as he had wandered out of the station and into the bright glare of a London summer, everything about the city was different to that young selfish boy right down to the smell. He pushed his NHS specs up his nose and made a pledge to himself to spend the next year winning tournaments, making his fortune and falling in love. He failed in all three.

The self-loathing had returning once again. This reminiscing was starting to become as painful as the soreness in his eye socket. London in the eighties was a different place to him; now full of ghosts and bad memories, it was time to leave. He reached to the bedside table and put on the new glasses that had been ordered for him. Much the same as his last ones; large teardrop shaped spectacles that fitted tightly over his eye patch making him feel twice as ugly and consequently ruining the pirate look he had been working on. Again, it was what lay dormant underneath the surface that worried him more, it was this ugly inside him that would eventually spill out of him. He dragged his lanky frame out of the bed and proceeded to put on his bloodstained clothes, a shudder ran down his spine as he put on the stinking coat, the shudder rooting him to the spot for a few minutes as a fear of the outside overwhelmed him. After a deep breath, he composed himself and left the hospital ward without a word to anyone just as he had left his father all those years ago.

A page from a newspaper scuttled over Gable’s size elevens and became trapped under his heel. Gable had to look at the date on the paper just to remind him of the month; it was late March. He felt as if he had been constantly walking since leaving the hospital. Immediately after discharging himself Gable had embarked on a tour of London. He spent days simply wandering the streets as if subconsciously saying goodbye to each individual part of the city. He’d traipsed up to East Finchley and then proceeded to immediately turn around and walk back through Camden and into the city centre, from there he walked across Battersea Bridge and on through to Clapham. Some of the streets, back alleys, bleak doorways stirred a familiarity within himself, yet he struggled to pull any true valid memory from the depths of his drunken shrivelled brain. Eventually after nearly a month of this and after having reached the southernmost point of London town he promptly turned back around and headed up out of the capital and into the Midlands or ‘The Wastelands’ as his dad had called the area. No one waved him goodbye and that was how he liked it.

He had eaten sparsely due to a lack of funds, but the hunger never really came so he counted himself lucky. He’d been on the road roughly for a month now, because of this his feet were swollen badly, blood seeped through the cracked skin on his toes and could be heard squelching under his feet, he just decided to ignore this state of affairs by simply never taking off his shoes and anyways it seemed to be in keeping with the bloody look he’d adopted. The persistent rain had failed in washing any of the New Year’s blood off his tattered clothes.

The rain had been pounding away at his face for the last three weeks. He needed to stop for several reasons; he had been sleeping in barns and bus stops since leaving the city and his tired frame needed a bed to surround itself. He was low on money and figured the town from which the newspaper had blown would provide some sort of short con; he could do that couldn’t he? “Ah shit” he bellowed to nobody in particular, maybe he just wanted company but, either way, and for whatever reason you want to give to the situation, Gable proceeded to walk into a town he would never bother to learn the name of, which was rarely marked on any map and where he would dwell for the next 14 years of his life.

The first thing that struck Gable about the town were the empty streets. It was as if he were the last man on earth. The houses, shops and cars of the town looked lonely; the windows, doors, wipers and curtains giving them the appearance of solemn faces staring down at him. Gable shivered and turned from their never-ending gaze, pulling his collar up against the constant onslaught of rain. Finally, as he approached the town centre shuffling bodies began to appear, for a minute Gable imagined his wasteful life ending right there in this God-forsaken land at the hands of the undead. It turned out to be an overweight lady and her child failing to shield themselves from the rain. Desperate for a drink, Gable spent the next half an hour searching for the local hole. He had nearly reached the other side of town when a pub came into view. On the approach Gable checked his funds, he had enough for a shot of rum and frankly that was all that mattered.

In keeping with the town the pub had no discernable name above its door. A sign did swing in the wind but the paint had worn off years ago, Gable thought he could make out an image of some kind of red-backed beast but couldn’t be sure. He took a deep breath and entered. Concern about his pounding heart was erased by the thick wall of tobacco smoke that hit his face. He would later realise that this was the first time he had entered a place in the aim to con since the incident with the Loser.

There were six people in the pub, all but one of them smoking heavily, their inhalations and exhalations almost in unison. All but one of them turned in the direction of Gable. His quick eye surveyed the surrounding area, mainly clocking the exit points should he make a terrible mistake again. He slowly approached the bar, giving himself more time and the first thing he noticed was the pool table. He had planned to maybe make some money with the pack of cards that he always kept on his person, but pool was his game and he knew he wanted to play again. Of the six people one was the landlord, a man in his forties slumped against the cash register with what seemed like not a care in the world, Gable took a few seconds to dwell on what the man’s stance said of his character; he looked like a man that didn’t want any trouble first and foremost, a man whose emotions, like Gable’s were kept hidden. This was ideal, Gable was worried he might fail again and a subdued squire was a big help. There were two pensioners silently perched on barstools with their hands cupping their stouts just in case anyone should attempt to steal them. As Gable came close to the bar he felt a sense of fear; since the beating he approached anyone over sixty with a certain trepidation, he didn’t know if there was a phobia for being scared of old people but he reckoned he had it. Gable controlled his nerves, nodded a hello to the two men and placed his hands on the bar.

“Double dark rum please, no ice.” Ordered Gable.

“What are you, a sailor?” joshed the barman in reply.

The two old men let out a ghastly smok-induced cackle that echoed around the room. Gable chose to reply with a smile and as the barman poured him two fingers he turned around to survey the other punters. Opposite Gable on the other side of the pub was another old man dressed head to toe in black like an ageing Milk Tray man. To his left were the two men playing pool, Gable assessed their skill before checking them over. One was terrible, whilst the other seemed to be able to hold his own, nevertheless, Gable could take them both even if the two codgers to his left scooped out his other eye.

“There you go, son.” Said the barman before asking in a deep baritone voice “Fancy a game do ya?”

“What’s that, sorry?” replied Gable.

“You’ve been staring longingly at the pool table.”

“Oh yeah, umm-thinking about it, who are the two playing, gambling types?”

“Ah, well. The big guy in the overalls, that’s Jackson, can’t play for toffee and he knows it. Doubt he’d play a money game. The other fellow though, comes in here all the time just for the pool table, don’t really drink see, just orange juice.”

“What’s his name?”

“The Lazy Duke.”

“The what?”

“The Lazy Duke. I guess it sounds kinda unusual, not as strange as some names, but stranger than most. His nickname has just evolved since his birth really. To put it in perspective for an out of towner like you he’s the richest man in this little ol’ town. Lives in the big mansion on the top of the hill, just a smidgen out of town. If you came in from the east you probably ain’t caught it yet. Funny looking place, don’t look right when it’s surrounded by all these post war houses and buildings. His old man was simply known as the Duke, had the nickname before John Wayne coined it even. A great man be rest assured, made this town a better place, had half the population under his employ at one time or another. Anyway his son, that fat fella there had a variety of names, nothing too crazy, Junior etc… Us lot in the town hardly saw him anyway. Well, you see the Duke passed away and with that so did all his businesses, he never really took an interest as far as townsfolk could tell and so he became the Lazy Duke. Oh yeah, he also gets called it because of his, shall we say slightly porky frame. Just seems right, plus he’s a fucking loon.” The landlord chuckled at his own description.

“But he’s good at pool though?” inquired Gable.

“Best in town I’d say. Got a table up at his house but got no one to play against. Don’t think it’s his wife’s game. So he just comes down the hill to this place and in his usual gregarious fashion manages to get someone to play against him. I mean look at Jackson, just trying to have a quiet pint on his lunch break and he’s got the Lazy Duke hounding him for another game.”

“Maybe I’ll relieve him” and with that Gable finished his rum and walked over to the two men. As he approached the table his heart moved into another gear, everything seemed to slide into slow motion, the crack of the pool balls echoed in his head as the chalk dust came into focus. Gable could sense his nerves bubbling underneath his skin, this was crazy, he’d played pool since he was a kid and had been conning since not long after. Get it together he told himself, and then he was stood at the foot of the pool table, feeling like he was in a Mexican standoff. The tension was only in Gable’s head but he knew, somehow he knew that this moment was not just a confrontation with his fears since being hospitalized. This moment was somehow, in the grand scheme of things important. This was the beginning.

“Fancy a game?” Gable asked as he prematurely chalked up a cue.

“Not me pal, got to get back to work.” Answered the man called Jackson and with that he was gone. The pub door closed shut behind Gable as he awaited the Lazy Duke’s response.

“Reckon I’ll put the radio on” shouted the landlord from behind the bar.

The silence between the two men continued, what the hell was going on thought Gable? Then …‘How will I know’ by Whitney Houston came blaring out of the pub’s speakers. Gable couldn’t quite believe the surreal situation he had found himself in, however, the Lazy Duke just burst into howls of laughter. The synthesized rhythms of the music where brought to a more modest level and only then did the Lazy Duke speak. It was as though he was waiting for everything to be in its place, for the timing to be just right, as if he was directing his own silent play within his head.

“Just messing with you” he said in a surprisingly high voice; he then shot out his hand to shake Gable’s. Gable suspiciously shook and as the Lazy Duke's fat sausage fingers grasped Gable’s hand he had a strong sense that he liked this barrel of a man, he had no reason to yet but still, there was an intangible warmth.

Gable closed his eyes and counted to ten, he needed to concentrate if he was going to hustle this rich fuck. That was what he had to be to Gable, just a rich fuck that’s going to pay for his board and keep, now speak.

“So shall we say twenty quid on the first game?” reply fat man, reply thought Gable. The reply was almost comically chirpy “Wow, playing for money, yippee.” Gable did not have the money, he figured he’d respectfully lose the next three games and then simply raise the bet, win and walk straight out the door, classic. The words the Lazy Duke spoke next changed everything.

“I’m a millionaire you know, twenty just isn’t enough excitement for me, can you play for more?”

Gable didn’t reply for a second, he needed to think. He knew he could beat this lovable buffoon that wasn’t in question, but how high was he willing to go, this gentleman was a millionaire, if he timed this correctly he could walk out of this pub with a small fortune. However, if he fumbled the pub could turn against him, with that thought his empty eye socket began to twitch. If asked to show how much he was willing to go he would come up empty handed, in the situation’s starkest reality he had no way to bankroll this unexpected turn of events, yet as the moments passed the dumb millionaire never asked to see the colour of Gable’s money and so Gable never showed him and with a gentle silence he picked up a cue. He decided to play the games by ear, and by that he decided to play reasonably well but still to lose, with dignity he hoped.

“Sure, fifty to start with?” Gable finally replied.

“Break, my one-eyed fellow.”

Gable laughed out loud in spite of himself. There was a childlike glee in the Lazy Duke’s reply that you could not help but be enamoured by. A snatch of shame flashed through the synapses of Gable’s brain before he broke the triangle striped and spotted balls across the green felt.

He proceeded to lose the first game with three balls still left on the table. The Lazy Duke in a rather patronizing gesture bought Gable a drink in an effort to keep the games going. Gable couldn’t help but let a sly smile form across his cracked face. This Duke character seemed to have misplaced various social skills during his life on the planet. He was at times almost childlike in his glee at having a reasonably skilled opponent to play, as well as in Gables eyes being terribly naïve. The Duke returned with a healthy measure of rum and a Schweppes bitter lemon for himself. “Moving on to the hard stuff eh?” joshed Gable.

“Very funny Mr Gable. Staying sober I feel, helps me continue taking money off of your inebriated self.”

Gable chuckled and decided this was a good time to find out a little bit about the Lazy Duke.

“So how old are you Mr Duke?”

“Thirty-five and one day” answered the Duke.

“Oh, happy birthday.”

“Thank you, it wasn’t that big a deal, just spent it with my wife.”

“Very sensible. I here you live in the big house overlooking the town.”

“Yes, that is correct. Since I was born. My mother actually gave birth to me in the room I now sleep in.”

“Nice. That must be very comforting,” said Gable in sarcastic tone that only he could pick up on. He was starting to get the impression the Lazy Duke was a mother’s boy. He pressed for more information about this foolhardy millionaire.

“Is it just the two of you then or do you have servants and such?”

“No, no, no a cleaner comes once a week and young Geoffrey helps with the grounds, but otherwise it’s just me and Scarlet bumbling around the ten bedrooms.”

Gable got the distinct impression the Lazy Duke was trying to show off and frankly why not, Gable had always been impressed by money, he had just left a capital city where on a daily basis he had to pass some suit flashing his cash around.

“You were born into money then?” asked Gable.

“What, you don’t approve Mr Gable?” replied the Duke with another question.

“No not at all, take it any way you can, that’s my motto.”

“Yes indeed. And how may I ask do you make a living?” asked the Lazy Duke in an amused bordering on smug tone.

Gable paused before answering; at this juncture he was not going to let himself lie to this man. He had bought him a drink after all and Gable had enjoyed their conversation, he had actually enjoyed this man’s company. It struck Gable that he had been lonely for years and this simple exchange; this humble act of getting to know someone was quite simply a joy. Why not extend this con? Gable realised he could pull the con anytime, it did not have to be today; it could be next week or next month. Why not build up the bet? This Duke was loaded for Christ’s sake and in the meantime he could enjoy the company of this larger than life character. It was right then that the 14 year hustle truly began.

The walk from the pub to the Lazy Duke’s mansion was ‘cartoonishly’ simple. They exited the main entrance, took a left and then simply walked straight until they reached a large gothic gate. The gate was unlocked, which Gable did not find in the slightest bit surprising; the Duke seemed to be a very trusting man. After the gate the two men walked up an incredibly steep hill, which with Gable’s drinking and smoking habits proved quite a challenge. Gable wondered why the portly man walking beside him was not slimmer if every day he traipsed up and down this mini mountain. As they reached the summit Gable took a second to glance over his shoulder to the town below. The view was magnificent; the green fields of England stretching into the horizon like a luxiourious duvet cover, the hills and valleys like the change in shape of a sleeping giant that lies fast asleep underneath, and nestled on top was the unknown town. What struck Gable about the town, which really was just a large village, was its simplicity. The geography of the town was easy to grasp, Gable traced his steps from the pub to where he had entered the town on the far side earlier today. How he had not spotted the Duke’s abode was a mystery to himself. He then turned around to see the home to which he had been invited and that was when he lost his control over the situation for number minutes.

Getting an invite into the Lazy Duke’s home was simple. Well at least to Gable, a man who had garnered favours from the most tight-fisted of men, and when your target is a bumbling millionaire with more money than sense the invite comes swiftly. Gable decided he would like to dwell in this town longer than he had first anticipated and that this raconteur was to be his host and hustle for the foreseeable future. Gable told him he was a simple wandering vagabond passing through on the lookout for work, any work in fact. The Duke at first let out one of his thundering laughs and said how this was the first time in years where he had come across such a romantic vision as a modern-day vagabond. Gable took the comment with a smile and patiently waited for what he knew and had been taught would come. After potting the black with an unnecessary power the Duke looked up at Gable and offered a unique and unusual job opportunity. He offered him job a playing pool. It was a moment so right and so in tune with what a man of Gable’s talents needed that one could argue a case of fate, of planets aligning even. The job would have a salary but this payment came with three conditions.

Gable was to pay back his recent gambling debts to the Lazy Duke as fast as possible. In other words he would not be paid until said bet was gone.
In order for item one to happen the Lazy Duke would be honoured if the modern-day vagabond would reside at the mansion.
Finally, the most important item. Gable was to spend all his earnings after settling the bet on gambling at the table with The Lazy Duke.

The Duke reeled off these points almost exactly as they are written above. This time Gable struggled to stifle a laugh, knowing the man was being for the first time deadly serious and the fact that this situation could not have turned out better, the Lazy Duke was actually going to give him a roof over his head and bankroll his scheme. Gable agreed and within the next half hour found himself looking at…

The mansion was awe-inspiring. Gable had never seen a building so grand. The fact that it towered above him certainly helped, but there was more to it than that. The building felt like it was alive, like another character being introduced into the story of his life. The vibrant dark oak of the building seemed to call out to him; Gable thought he could sense magic emanating from these walls. His anticipation at entering through the large double doors was reaching fever pitch when the Lazy Duke finally turned the ornate brass handle and opened the doors to his family home.

What greeted Gable was a sight he would take to his deathbed. Since entering the town there had been a dreamlike quality cast over everything before him, this was now taken up a notch as the marble floor of the reception hallway cast a blinding white light against the porcelain skin of the most beautiful girl Gable had ever seen. His single eye stretched out of it’s socket desperately struggling to take in what stood before. Everything from the cascading staircase to the ancient portraits lined up on all the walls to the hallway only helped contribute to making the scene seem hyper real. And then there was Scarlet.

When recollecting this cherished memory, which Gable did often, he could never truly remember how long a silence passed between the three of them. He also wondered if he himself had come across as inappropriate the longer he stared dumbfounded. Scarlet was stood in a dress the colour of her name, a grand ball gown that seemed to swirl out of the chequered floor like a tornado rising and rising up to an open neckline, above was a face so angelic that it could almost cause laughter at how perfect it seemed. Above this was a tussled storm of dirty blond hair that fell to her shoulders causing Gable to take a final look at her breasts before putting all his effort into opening his mouth.

All that exited his throat was a simple “hello.” During the introductions Gable asked himself several questions - the first was the most obvious, how did these two end up together? As the Lazy Duke put his arm around Scarlet’s waist and gave her a curt kiss hello Gable tried to work out how this relationship worked. This was not a marriage of convenience and Gable was pretty sure Scarlet was no gold digger, or at least that wasn’t her main priority, if that was the case there stood two false faces before the Duke at this moment in time. Secondly, why was Scarlet, a woman left at home to entertain herself lounging around dressed in a gown more suitable to an auspicious occasion the like of which comes round every few years if not decades or ever for someone like Gable? Gable’s lack of speech was not just because of the heightened reality that surrounded him, it was also due to the fact that his previous dalliances with the opposite sex had been either fumbles in the toilet of a pool hall or cash exchanges over a dust-covered bedside table. He swallowed his nerves and looked Scarlet in the eye.

“Come in, come in” urged Scarlet in a voice that seemed older than her years, which Gable figured, put her in her late twenties. The door slammed behind him echoing around the hall, Gable tilted his head back taking in the spacious hallway, how could two people live in a house as large as this? The hallway alone was the biggest room Gable had ever been in. The ceiling stretched upward towards the heavens causing the large windows to fall behind them letting the bright white light that seemed to follow them, illuminate their pathway as they exited the hallway into second biggest room Gable had ever entered.

It was a sitting room or library with the walls lined with books, all of which looked older than the combined ages of the people in the room. Scarlet went over to a drinks cabinet which was out of earshot, the two men exchanged glances in that unspoken way men do and the Lazy Duke quietly murmured “I know”. Gable let out a gentle little smile, which would expand to stifled laughter later on in the night as he passed the master bedroom on his way to the lavatory and happened to hear the Lazy Duke reach orgasm and let out a squeaky whine like a pig being castrated.

“It’s gonna be so great to have someone else around here, not only to help out with all the little jobs that need doing, but just to have another voice to fill the void,” explained Scarlet.

Gable sensed she too was lonely, he had also sensed this in the Lazy Duke and he now took stock to marvel at how three lonely people had ended up in the centre of England drinking brandy and exchanging pleasantries. At a moment when they all took a sip from their glasses at the same time Gable realised that the Duke was drinking an alcoholic beverage when before he had refused all such offers, this told Gable that the Lazy Duke was keen to be a part of something, he may not be conscious of what that was but he would change his ways to do so regardless. This all helped Gable, this was information he could use and would inevitably use to his advantage.

This wasn’t the time for life stories and it took Gable a long time to open up to people, he was also tired and run down. He had been walking for days prior to finding himself in the grand armchair he now occupied. He was desperate for a bed rather than a dank bus stop or park bench. He politely explained this to the couple before telling them he would attempt to explain the blood on his clothes tomorrow. A genuine concern fell upon their brows that truly moved Gable. As dusk fell over the mansion Gable was led up the staircase and through a series of corridors, his eyes becoming heavy as they approached the principal guestroom. He would never be able to trace his way back, if only he’d had some bread-crumbs on his person. Goodnights were repeated threefold and then Gable climbed fully clothed into the four-poster bed and fell into a guilt ridden deep sleep.

Gable climbed back into bed after emptying his bladder and overhearing his hosts mating. He did not want to think ‘make love’ as that seemed to suggest Scarlet was in turn in love with the Lazy Duke, which Gable didn’t want to believe. In a ‘you’re kidding yourself’ fashion he wanted to be the one lying against her smooth naked skin. He realised he had an erection, decided there was no more sleep for himself tonight so walked to the large bay windows and let in the night as he lit up a rolled cigarette.

He had found himself in a strange, but comforting situation. He was essentially being employed by a millionaire to play pool against him on a daily basis. The millionaire unaware that he was slowly gathering his confidence, taking as many months as needed, whilst also enjoying the comfort of his surroundings. Making the said millionaire get more and more eager as the bet increases, so eager in fact that the employee would not need to show money in order to get him to bet, their false friendship having been solidified over the past few months. And then and only then the employee reveals his cards and strikes, walking away from this town with the millionaire’s fortune.

Gable exhaled a gushing plume of smoke. It was all well and good setting out his plan so matter of factly in his head, but problems were already starting to occur. For instance tomorrow morning he would have to tell them the reason for the blood on his clothes, his lack of any luggage or belongings and how he wound up in this long forgotten part of the country. Telling his story under any other circumstances would involve explaining his underhand occupation, I am a hustler, a swindler, a conman, a low-down-good-for-nothing-piece of sh… He stopped himself when he felt his cigarette burning into his forefinger. This was why this was difficult, he liked these two people, and he had already felt an unspoken bond earlier in the library. Why did he have to take them for everything they had? He was a greedy man that’s why, he knew nothing else in life and surely by being rich he would eventually redeem himself. If he didn’t go through with what seemed to be the con of a lifetime he was surely letting himself down and letting the distant memory of his father down. As he put more tobacco into another piece of rolling paper he decided to continue with the con for now. In age-old Gable fashion he would put the final decision of what to do off for a couple of days or weeks. He would continue to play poorly at pool and if he decided to pull the con he could do it at any time. In the meantime, he would enjoy living in a mansion and learning about the Lazy Duke and his wife.

The rest of the night was spent deciding how to tell his story and leave out the parts about being a hustler. It took till sunrise to construct a narrative that stuck to as much of the truth as possible, or at least as much of the truth as Gable would allow. And as Gable heard the sound of a cockerel for the first time in his life he was ready to tell his lie.

The Fabricated Story of Gable - Part One.

I arrived in London young and most definitely impressionable. My life up to that point had been made up of seeing the same dozen faces day after day, week after week. In the centre of Kings Cross station, I was surrounded by hundreds of human beings. Feeling suffocated I clambered out of the station and immediately leapt onto the nearest double-decker bus not even attempting to take in this typically famous sight of London for the first time. It was 1970 and I was scared.

Worried I’d made a terrible mistake I got off the bus a minute or so later at the next stop, crossed the road and waited for another bus to take me back to the station and in essence back to Wales. You see I was a stupid arrogant runaway, running away to prove something that at the time I couldn’t even articulate. Looking back now, sixteen years later I had no reason at all to run. A lot of kids runaway from home because they are misunderstood, I certainly felt that way at the humble age of sixteen. At thirty I realise it was me that did not understand my father, or anything else for that matter. To be blunt I was an idiot. My childhood is almost impossible for me to recall in any kind of lucid way, whenever I try to remember a joyous memory from a summer holiday or a first kiss I get a hint of it for a second, a dreamlike image in my mind and then it escapes me. I am unable to catch up with the memory due to years of dulling my senses, my childhood, whatever that was now laughs at me, taunting me for throwing it away for the chance of what I know not. Nevertheless this time was cut several years short and in the next few months I would become a man for better or worse.

I had enough money to get me bed and breakfast for about four days, after that I had to find an income. In my haste I had left Wales with no thought of how I would survive initially, I had no idea how expensive London could be and in the end I had to resort to thieving. At first it was just the odd apple from the markets in Soho by week two in the capital I had begun to contemplate breaking into people’s homes. I had come to terms quite quickly that the only way, for there were no others, was to squeeze through kitchen windows and skulk around bedrooms in the moonlight. It was only my second housebreak when my life changed. My heart was trying to escape from my chest and I was stood in a small kitchen that reeked of rotten meat and vegetables, with images of my father flashing across my eyes when I heard four words I’ll never forget.

“Pull up a pew.”

The voice came from behind me. As I had come through the window I could have sworn I hadn’t seen anyone or heard any breathing, I mean who sits alone in their filthy kitchen in the dark at three in the morning. Whatever my thoughts on the house owners nocturnal habits I was caught and there was nothing a scrawny sixteen-year-old could do about it. It was a fair cop, after this awkward but inevitable situation had played itself out I would be arrested and spill my guts like a clichéd canary and consequently be sent home admitidly willingly to my dear old da’. A crooked but kind of happy ending I supposed. I was in every way mistaken.

The man in the shadows turned out to be a thief himself amongst other criminal activities. And to skip a few chapters of this tale I became Olivier to his Fagin. ‘The thief who stole from the thief’ is how he introduced me to his cronies, this was shortly replaced by ‘sack of shit’, ‘streak of piss’ and a thousand other expletives. I was too young to know what to do, prior to my failed break-in I had been hungry every second of the waking day, the hunger had even started to perferate my dreams. Fagin took me under is criminal wing and I guess I never looked back. Given the choice between right and wrong, the easy and the hard, I’ve always chosen the lazy option, if becoming a member of the underworld meant being fed, if being this Fagin’s whipping boy meant food would be put in front of me then that is what I would chose. Anyway, the man in the shadows was called Conner and he was the first person to buy me a pint of beer. I hated him to his very soul.

My first pint was rushed down my throat by Conner constantly tipping it back whilst laughing with his criminal buddies at my inability to drink a beer as fast as a so-called real man. Over the on coming months I became the butt of every single one of his jokes, it was like his only avenue of comedy was the timid teenager by his side. Self deprecation was never an option for Connor, every story was about one of my fuck-ups or which loser of the world I looked like, if I stumbled over the answer to a question posed by one of his gang he swooped like a condo,r cutting me off and using a simple incorrect phrase to abuse me. Every time I heard him call for me I felt sick, the silence of my bedroom destroyed in a second, I was only minutes away from some kind of ritual humiliation, I prayed for sleep. My only friend in this nightmare I had locked myself into had been introduced to me by that first pint Connor had bought me - alcohol.

Now to take a side step from the story for a second, I don’t consider myself an alcoholic. I haven’t got a life for alcohol to destroy is the way I see it, so I’ve never bothered to quit it. I’m not a violent man unless provoked and the booze has only ever helped me get through tough times. It’s either fall asleep to the dreams of the home I walked away from or hit the pillow in a hazy lump. I know what your thinking, I have chosen that easy option again, I’ve let myself down. Well screw you, you being the consensus that damns me, you and your middleclass uneventful ways of living, you who have followed those before them step for repeated step, you who have so much yet still decide to sneer at the likes of me, the likes who need. Do I protest too much? Does this out-burst of anger suggest so? Maybe, maybe not.

So as the seventies hit their mid point my face got red and blotchy and I began to get beaten. The first time Connor beat me was the summer of ’72. In the two years I had known him he had increasingly become more bitter, my youth seemed to be something that he grew to hate, a sign of his wasted life I guess. Those two years before the punches certainly shaped my personality; Connor’s bitterness overflowing into the one who stood unwittingly beside him. Yet there we were sharing the same accommodation, everything I did annoyed him, too noisy, not quick enough, too much lip. And then one day the punch came, knocking me off my feet. There was a pause for a few minutes whilst Connor made his own choice, his decision came without ceremony and a boot broke two of my ribs. I awoke several hours later lying where I had fallen. Looking up to see Connor watching the telly I realised I couldn’t really move, I made some kind of sound, a plead for help maybe. Connor saw that I had awoken. He got up, walked over so he was stood above me again, stared at me for a few moments and then kicked me back to sleep.

The summer of that year was a glorious season if my memory serves me correctly. I mean super tiptop hot. If my eyes hadn’t been puffed up and every step I took didn’t hurt to high thunder I do truly believe it could have been one of the best. It was about this time I took a dislike to students. You see I did not have much to do in the daylight hours and the students of the various London universities and colleges also seemed to have many days free. Free to lie out in Regents Park wallowing in the rays. Guys stripped down to their flares kicking a football across the bright green lawn as their pretty girlfriends watched on. Jealousy was all it was, but give me a break, a sadistic gangster had just punched me in the face exactly sixteen times (I counted it helped me absorb the pain). I envied their freedom and happiness, I felt like they had somehow taken my place, the place my father had reserved for me. As dusk loomed the guys put the football to rest and I imagined them going back to their halls of residence to hump their girls. Whilst I still a virgin stumbled back to the bedsit I shared with Connor and dreamt of home again.

So I guess you could say life was pretty crappy as I entered my twentieth year. Feeling like I had nowhere else to go I had spent the last two years as Connor’s personal punch bag. Even when I ran he found me hungry and desolate under the neon lights of the city. It was at this time that I decided it was time for Connor to die. He was scum; I’d known it the first time he told me to take a pew. And every time he cut me or hit me my hatred grew and my skin became thicker. I didn’t spend hours planning to kill him, concocting some elaborate death, all I wanted was for him in his last moments to look me in the eyes with a terrible sense of regret. All I wanted was for my Fagin to be out of my life forever, so I could pursue some kind of future. That future I soon realised was unattainable, but that is a story for another day. What I did think about concerning the death of Connor was my promise to take the opportunity when it arose. You see the two of us didn’t have standard lifestyles. Trust me when I say I knew a situation would soon present itself. I realise that I bring up the subject of murder in a rather matter of fact manner, forgive me. It’s just that Connor needed to die; he had no use to the world apart from misery. I have no doubt in my heart that if Connor had been born into different circumstances or had bothered to learn anything in his life he would have become some kind of sadist dictator. Luckily for the world he was a fool. Unluckily for me I was dependent on the fool. So that left killing him, taking what money I had and, and what? Answer not applicable at this stage, or did my ambitions only stretch to the following morning? I'm afraid they did.

I murdered Connor approximately a hundred times. Although I never concocted a plan as such, my fantasies did range from a simple crack across the skull to driving a knife deep into his heart, to punching his nose up into his brain, to smashing his thick skull against the pavement till his brains spilled out onto the road. However, not one of these scenarios came to pass. In the end I never murdered Connor; I was simply present at his death.

It was autumn when Connor was shot. Some nervous victim of one of our break-ins shot off the left side of his scalp as we were raiding his front room. His wife’s screams instantly pierced the nighttime silence and I knew we had to get out quick. Connor’s eyes had started to glaze over, he was a strong brute of man and somehow he had managed to stay conscious. We left the remainder of his skull on the wall behind us and barged past the shooter who seemed to be in as much shock as Connor. We left by the back door and scuttled into the back alleys of London. After about five minutes of wandering in no particular direction my Fagin slumped to the concrete beneath his feet. I turned around to see him looking up at me, he knew exactly what I was going to do and I kind of believe he was expecting it. This moment lasted less than a second before I turned and left him for dead.

The Lazy Duke and Scarlet said nothing, they simple stared at Gable in silent contemplation. Gable decided it would be wise of him to say something.

“I realise this was maybe more than you expected, but I can’t really explain why I’ve turned up in your town as I have without telling you this tale.”

The silence continued for another few a moment before Scarlet laughed heartily in spite of her unease and said “that’s quite a story Gable, quite a story indeed. I feel there is more to come and it is already well past breakfast and lunch is looming.”

The Lazy Duke continued to keep quiet. Gable sensed Scarlet was seeking some kind of response from him, needing to quantify his tale in some way. In essence assurance was needed.

“I am not a danger to you or your husband, I can promise you that.” Said Gable in the sincerest manner he could muster.

Danger comes in many forms thought Gable as this white lie fluttered out into the atmosphere. He continued, “I will tell you the rest of my story another time perhaps, but suffice to say you are the first to hear it and the words seem to have taken the wind out of my sails just speaking of it. Surly you have tales to tell yourselves?”

And then The Duke decided to speak “I’ve only ever left this town once and my mother went and died.” For some inexplicable reason the three of them burst into laughter. In each individual case it was a cathartic laugh. Each one of these players letting out an invisible sigh due to the Duke’s out of place comment. His story would also come later, however, it was now time for Gable to be properly introduced to the mansion and its grounds.

The Lazy Duke and Gable left Scarlet drinking black coffee in the kitchen and began the tour. The Duke started by reeling off facts and figures about the construction of the mansion: when it was built, how only his family had ever resided here, which of the wings were constructed at a later date and so on. Gable sensed during this entire hullabaloo that the Lazy Duke had rehersed this speel many a time. However, unbeknownst to Gable this was a debut performance. The Duke in his childlike glee struggled to keep his exuberance under control as the grounds behind the mansion were revealed to Gable.

The mansion never ceased to surprise Gable. This kind of wealth had always impressed him whether he was catching a documentary on television about how the other half live or observing a man of money on the London streets or even in watching a potential loser throw down a wad of twenties in an effort to impress his drinking affiliates. As his eyes began watering because of the winter breeze hitting his face for the first time that morning he realised this was the only time he had ever come in contact with real wealth and he wanted it for himself.

The two men wandered into a small but tangled forest that the Lazy Duke explained marked the end of the property. It had taken them fifteen minutes to get to this point and Gable savoured every second. It was a walk he would take many times in the next fourteen years, it would become like a religious practice for him, the morning walk. Gable wasn’t much into religion or any Zen-like activity, but breathing in this good clean air was calming his soul.

As they turned a left out of the forest they could see the faint figure of Scarlet waving at them from one of the many bedroom windows. It was then that Gable realised deep in his heart that he did not just want all of the Lazy Duke’s wealth and property he also wanted his wife. He wanted Scarlet.

“ I could show you around all the nooks and crannies of the mansion, but you know what I think is better and that’s for you to discover its delights yourself, don’t you agree Mr. Gable?” Gable shook himself out of the daydream that was engulfing him and nodded a brisk reply.

“Good, good. However, there is one room inside the mansion I have to show you. It is the most important room and I expect you to be in there at ten every morning, no excuses.”

The odd couple wandered back into the house and as they approached this most important of important rooms, the Duke made sure that Gable was very clear as to the direction, pointing out minor landmarks and such. The door to the room was at least twelve feet high and Gable smirked when the Duke struggled to open it, the Duke’s confidence taking a slight knocking as the door smoothly glided open. The room had one main object dwelling inside, his eyes where immediately drawn to it. It was the most luxurious, perfectly kept pool table Gable had ever seen. Not one blemish on its surface, the wood it was encased in sparkled. Gable’s mouth went dry as he circled the table. The Duke just folded his arms and lent back against the wall enjoying his new employee’s reaction. What Gable loved most about the table was that it was an authentic American arcade table complete with a coin slot and a glass window displaying all the shiny balls that Gable’s world revolved around. “And so, shall we play?” sung the Duke as he passed Gable a beautifully crafted cue.

Gable chose to reply simply by inserting a coin into the table. The two men stood in silence as the table came to life, there was a roar of noise as the game balls rattled around inside the stomach of the beast only to be spat out of it’s asshole several seconds later. The table went back to sleep as Gable racked the balls. He realised after he finished that he had regrettably racked them in a flourish of speed and style.

“Wow, that was impressive. We should get you to rack up every time. How come you play an average game and yet rack like that?” said the Lazy Duke.

Gable again chose to reply to the Duke’s rather condescending question with action rather than words. He broke off with a powerhouse of strength, the ripples of the clash between ball and cue being sent up his arms into his heart. “Fuck it!” whispered Gable to himself as he proceeded to play an amazing game. He simply had no choice, he wasn’t going to let his first game on a table of this pedigree be anything less than spectacular, he would let his following games against the Duke contribute to the con, for now, however, he played for himself.

He very nearly seven balled the Lazy Duke. The Duke stifled his reaction, his cock sureness pushed into submission. Gable a master at reading body language would be the one to let it out in oncoming hours. As Gable relapsed into your average half-baked pool player and the Duke’s confidence returned to the table Gable’s memory returned to the facts of the tale he had omitted from the couple earlier that day.

Most of what he had relayed that morning had been essentially true at least in the outcomes. Thievery had replaced hustling. In reality he had played a Connor type in his first attempt to get some cash at a table. He did not have the entrance fee for the championships he so desperately wanted to compete in so playing pool for money seemed a quick and painless way to gain access to the funds he needed. Shortly after this decision was made someone, a failed to remember who, asked him to ‘Take a pew’ and he was introduced to the world of the small-time hustler. The rest of the story was kind of true, he had hung with a group of scum and been beaten regularly. Even the break in at the end of part one was true, the shooter being a sore loser who a day earlier had refused to pay up. Gable and blank faced someone, again he couldn’t remember the name of the man who had lost half his head to that bullet, had decided to force the money out of the unsuspecting victim. Unfortunately the outcome had been not to everyone’s liking. As Gable deliberatly missed another ball he mused over when he would continue the story. Not too soon he figured there was no hurry was there? He had comfortable surroundings, a pool table and some much-needed peace and quiet - why ruin it?

Time had entered Gable’s existence. Never before had he mused over the onset of time and now he had to take as much of it as possible. If he wanted to take the Lazy Duke’s fortune, estate and wife, patience was needed. He had to build the bet, winning occasionally but only enough to prove himself a challenge. The Duke had to, he repeated to himself, had to always believe he could win. Pride was his weakness so a public game was surely a necessity. The hype and excitement would start here in this room. It would build and build until the Lazy Duke would wager his life. Then and only then Gable would pounce. Until that moment came, for he knew not when, only that it would, he would hang back and get to know these two new friends of his. So as 1986 progressed onward so Gable’s internal contradiction began.

THE HALF-HEARTED PURSUIT

2010-03-24T04:57:00.001-07:00

He could not urinate. As much as he squeezed his groin muscles, nothing was escaping him. He was bordering on being drunk, was that why he couldn’t piss? Or was it more to do with the fact that he occasionally suffered from ‘stage fright’ when stood at a public urinal. It was a Friday night and this East London pub was busy, so inevitably two men that had no problem emptying their bladders flanked him on either side. He really just wanted to go home, all he had to do was piss and then get on the tube; his drinking partners had left ten minutes ago. The two men beside him zipped up their flies and left in unison without washing their hands. He took the opportunity to quickly dash into the nearby cubicle. He closed the door behind him as best as he could, as always in places like this the lock had perished. He pulled his cock out of his jeans and felt it shrink in his palm as he heard two more men enter the gents.

These two deep voiced men proceeded to have a conversation that filled him with dread.

“Did you see that girl as we came in?”

“The blonde with big tits, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s the one.”

“Amazing, a little chubby though, but I like that.”

“I would seriously fuck that bint up big-time.”

“Agreed, a cunt like that needs a dressing down.”

They both laughed, seemingly unaware that he is listening. He is both appalled and addicted by their exchange in equal measure. And then that balance is tipped.

“Maybe we should… You know.”

“You mean rape her?”

“What else, we’ve done it before. And frankly I want to do something with this.”

“Don’t point that fucking thing at me you cunt.”

“C’mon, let’s follow her. She was saying goodbye to her mates as we came in. If we shoot now, reckon we’ll catch her.”

“What if she’s with someone?”

“It was only girls she was hanging with, if she has a flatmate then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”

“Deal.”

The two men left. He had still not urinated. He pulled up his jeans and tried to get his thoughts into gear. What was he going to do? He had only heard their voices. However, he knew which girl they were talking about from their simplistic description. Should he tell someone at the bar? What was he going to say? They could have been joking. He felt himself begin to sweat. In the end with time pressing he decided, however embarrassing, to confront the girl in question.

A wisp of blonde hair fluttered out of the entrance to the pub. Two large forty-something men followed. He looked around in desperation, unsure of what to do. Again his warped inner pride and sense of embarrassment confused matters. For a second he thought of his schooldays before leaving the establishment in a half-hearted pursuit.

It was late; groups of people were slowly causing the city streets to look bare. He twisted his head quickly from left to right, almost giving himself whiplash. He saw the backs of the two men turn off the street. He jogged in their direction. He had to think, had to think, he had to think what to do. He had to point them out to someone before it was too late, but if they were just mucking around he didn’t want to… what? Cause a scene? Get them into trouble? “Coward” he said to himself and turned the corner. There were only three people up ahead, the girl and the two men. “Shit!” he said, and thought on how there was no one he could call on for help.

At the end of road, rising ominously out of the shadows was some kind of warehouse. Only one window remained unbroken, again he thought of his youth, this image resurrecting long lost memories for a second.

Worried he would be seen he dipped into alcove at the side of the road. He grabbed his mobile out of his pocket and saw with a sinking heart that it was out of battery.

He heard raised voices and quickly popped his head around the corner of the wall. In the distance he saw the blonde woman pulling away from one of the men who was gripping her hand tightly. The other brute was clearly getting agitated and without a second thought punched the woman in the face.

Before entering the disused warehouse he considered running back to the pub for help. Worryingly though, the warehouse was a large building and he was concerned he would lose them or return to late, too late for what? He hadn’t even seen their faces in full; his description would be comedic at best. He chastised himself briefly for thinking of these sequences of events as anything but horrific.

The gloom of the warehouse bore down on him oppressively. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick, the fear was overpowering him. In spending time getting himself in the right frame of mind to enter the building he had momentarily lost the group. He tried to convince himself that there was nothing more he could do and return to the pub and call the police, thinking that he could potentially sleep soundly that night. It was then he heard a woman’s voice and one of the men shout, “Shut the fuck up!”

He crept through the dark hallways trying to find where they were. After five minutes of divvying and dathering he came to a door ajar. “Ajar, ajar, ajar.” He kept repeating the word to himself; was he losing his mind? ‘Please let this be a drunken nightmare’ he wished. Within a second the wish was dismissed and he heard the gut wrenching sound of an arm being snapped. A grim curiosity helped him push the door an inch wider. What his widening, bloodshot eyes witnessed was the woman pinned down by one of them over an old wooden work counter. The other man had ripped her dress to shreds and her breasts were exposed to the moonlight. The light from the moon was shining directly onto her face and as he realised she was still conscious she turned towards the door. Before shrinking away behind the door, afraid she would see him, he saw how truly beautiful she was. A second later her heard a deep guttural scream that would haunt him until he died.

Exams, body odour, warm sunshine, running – always running, the head girl - Jennifer Bradley, Weezer, French kissing, inappropriate erections, his bedroom, Freddie Krueger, school uniform, The Cosby Show, chicken pox, learning recorder, Christmas, Slash from Guns n’ Roses, knock – door – run, sports day, learning to dive in the local lake, the ‘Bad’ album, Thundercats, fighting with his sister, playing in the snow.

This is what he thought of, as all he heard from the empty room was an endless scream as the two men entered her again and again, laughing as they did so. Occasionally he could hear their fists on her skin, a horrible dull smack of a sound.

His cowardice kept him were he was; hid behind the door curled up in the foetal position, hoping neither the two men or even the woman would discover him, especially the blonde woman. With the never-ending grunts of the two men in his ears he realised he still needed to urinate. It was then that he pissed himself.

PIXELS

2010-03-24T04:56:00.003-07:00

The huge engines fired out across the sky. Each ship leaving an impression of a small sun in the sky as it broke free of the Earth’s atmosphere. Every time zone obviously looked markedly different from each other, but these circles of bright light that lit up the skies could be seen across the world, day or night. It was a beautiful sight; the sky changed for that one day, each of these colourful markings in the sky signified a hope, a chance for humanity. Many of the planet’s population chose to watch this operation on the Net, but those that could, walked from their apartments and simply looked up into the evening. Some of them had purchased expensive video equipment for the occasion and managed to focus on the docking stations hovering above the major cities of the world. If you watched that footage back you can make out the pilots, soldiers, scientists and leaders saying their final goodbyes to loved ones, each with a story to tell, to most, however, indistinguishable from each other. But if you took the time to look deep into the pixels you would see…

“They’ll be calling for my ship any minute now. Shit! I didn’t expect this to come around so quickly. I figured we would have more time together. It seems ironic that time is what I want and that is exactly the reason I’m leaving, to get us more time.”

“By us, you mean them, them down there. Staring up at you and me now. You’re not getting us any more time. And if we are being realistic, you’re not really gaining them any extra time at all. They will have lived out their lives just as they would have. This elusive time your talking about is a gift to the unborn. And I for one don’t give a shit about them.”

“Don’t be bitter. We talked this over a thousand times and more.”

“It’s hard not to be bitter when the reality of the situation is upon you. You’re right, as obvious as it sounds the survival of the human race is more important than what we have blah, blah, blah... Its just I love you and I don’t think I can live without you.”

“I know, I know. You’re the best man I’ve ever known, and I feel terrible doing this to you. When they asked for volunteers I put my hand up immediately. It was my duty, something I should do. Never the less, if I hadn’t, I think I would have been cajoled into it anyway.”

“Why?”

“Well, unfortunately, I’m crucial to this mission being a success. Hopefully my sacrifices will be worth it.”

“What with the payout to your family you mean? I’ll never see it. It’ll be tied up in court for years. You’ll be back by the time that money is available. Back to live a glorified life in the future.”

“To be fair I’m hoping the money will make that future half bearable. You do realise every one I’ve ever known will be dead, bar my space-buddies? You realise that, right? Because I’m not leaving you because of spite, I’m trying to save the planet from destruction!”

“What a ridiculous sentence, and before you say anything I don’t mean you’re being ridiculous. It’s just how did it come to this? How did we get to a point where I am on the brink of saying goodbye to my wife for the last time, a wife who is not leaving me as such, just shooting off into the stars at the speed of light to find a cure for what may ultimately destroy us all years from now. A wife who will have aged only ten years or so by the time you return; return to my grave.”

“Don’t. Please don’t.”

Silence.

A sigh.

His mouth opens.

“I’m sorry. I had this final goodbye all rehearsed. I even practised it out loud to the dog – it was moving. But be sure that it did not involve an obvious and pedantic speech. Again sorry.”

“Don’t be, sorry is the last thing you should be.”

“Maybe so, listen give me a few seconds, I have to say what I planned to say.”

A few seconds.

“Maya, I am in awe of what you are doing. Fuck it! I’m in awe of you full stop. Where many would have resented walking in your shadow, resented your intelligence, your warmth, your compassion; Not I, I saw it as an honour to walk alongside you as achieved you’re accomplishments. Happiness is something I am proud to say I have known and that is down to you. I fear sadness welcomes me next; I promise you I will fight it. A life without you will be difficult, near impossible, but I will succeed. Every time I feel weak, feel like giving it all up, putting a gun to my head, I will look to the stars and breath the air that you strive to preserve. I love you so much, so mu…”

A tear rolls down both their cheeks.

Intrusive loud speakers blare out “Sections 46 to 65, operatives 12-A to J and Premiers to your ships please.”

“Please not yet. I need more time.”

“You have to go. There is no way this was ever going to be easy.”

“You are so strong, it is easier for me, I have a mission.”

“Just go, you fucking cunt!”

Laughter is heard above the fired up engines.

“Kiss me.”

And kiss her he did.

The huge carrier lifted itself from the docking station and slowly turned itself in the direction of space. In a few minutes time it will have left the Earth’s atmosphere to embark on its long arduous journey. But for now the world’s population wanted to see it do one thing – create a circle of light in the sky. The ship obliged and a thousand video cameras made an effort to record the fourteenth departure of the day. If however, you made an effort to pan down to the barren docking station and looked deep into the image and studied each pixel, you would see one thing – a man alone.

HE HUNTED

2010-03-24T04:56:00.001-07:00

He hunted. That’s what he did, that’s all he could do.

He hunted in the alleys of the towns he passed, in the gutters and the deserted streets of the suburbs. Nobody knew he existed, he had been reported missing years ago; when people of the towns did acknowledge him it was with disdain. He tracked using the waste that was left behind. Using the bins and litter of these towns to lead him north and south, east and west. Always on the hunt, he slept in the day and used the twilight to hunt by. He stalked the towns whilst others slept, he stalked the little cracks of suburbia while the middle classes slept unaware of the hunter in their back gardens. This monastic life was a world away from the commutes and paperclips of his previous incarnation ten years ago, before he hunted.

That was a life of repressed emotions, but in a sense the uncontrollable rage had always been there. Everything then seemed black and white, his decisions made for him by an unknown force. He commuted. That’s what he did, that’s all he could do. If he had to give himself a title for those times it would be The Commuter. It sounds like an insult, and if at the time he ever heard the term he always felt that it was derogatory in some unexplainable way. Every part of his day was a unit of time he crawled hopelessly through. Surrounded by the photocopies of photocopies, dying biros and half dead expressions he prayed for his employment to be terminated. Mid way through his day he forced down the limp sandwich he had made yesterday and followed it with a concentrated juice box, it made him feel like a child. He had stopped drinking adult liquids like coffee years ago, why try and keep awake? What was the point? Throughout the afternoon he dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, sometimes he dotted the t’s and crossed the i’s, his one act of rebellion. And then he donned his commuter suit and returned to the suburbs of England because that was all he could think to do.

The trail had died. It had led him to the town he now wandered. A town the same as any other, built around a train station with a large neon lit supermarket on the border, a depressing seventies designed shopping centre and no discernable heart. For all he knew this could have been where he used to live. The streets where he stood looked almost identical to his old home; all the angles were in the same places, the new build brick work looked the same, the models of the parked cars matched the ones in his memory, could this even be his old street? He stopped still in the middle of the road for a moment. A full moon shown down on him as he turned his body around and around looking for something, some recognisable object, something that could distinguish this street from all the others he had wandered through. After several minutes he could not find one thing. But really why did it matter? So the streets all looked the same, it didn’t stop him from hunting. That was what was most important, not some nostalgic trip down memory lane.

The single part of his old life that did not conform, that was unpredictable, which had passion, was his wife. She was the one tangible thing that could surprise him; leave him aghast. This is not to say she was always a joy. Prior to the beginning of the hunt they had been in the centre of a storm of emotional problems, connection issues, and any other number of modern phrases aimed at replacing the statement ‘falling out of love’. But even these crushing, cruel times were a surprise. He welcomed them just as much as when she made him laugh, because they were something different like a jolt of electricity to his haggard frame. When he opened the front door and the warmth of the central heating enveloped him he had no idea of what would happen next.

There must be a clue around here somewhere, for he had been crawling through this god for saken town for three days now and nothing. This didn’t make sense, the trail had been very clear. He had last found a trace on the motorway just before the exit to this town. The beast must need to eat and this town was the nearest, there is simply no way he would not have passed through here, it was exactly the sort of place where he would want to graze. The hunter vaulted a fence and landed in someone’s garden, crumpling a bed of roses under his boots. He wandered through the shadows of the night and lent his sullen weight against a shed. He rolled himself a cigarette and looked up at a bedroom window, a bedroom window similar to the window he had looked out of just after it had happened.

When they first moved into the house they would make a home, his feelings for her were almost embarrassingly apparent. He scolded himself continuously for kissing and holding her too much. She never seemed to mind, she approached him almost as much as he approached her. The fact that he let his emotions out so openly proved in a way that she was worth it. Every second was an increment of time he desperately did not want to waste. If he was caught in a queue at the local shop he found himself getting incredibly angry and impatient; he should be with her. For a while the commute didn’t weigh down on his thoughts, it wasn’t all consuming like it was just before.

That was when he heard something. A rustle, leaves being parted and not by a cat or a fox, this was bigger, much bigger. Luck was on his side for once. Somehow he had managed to stumble across the beast by accident. He threw the half smoked roll-up to the ground and concentrated on making himself more alert. The animal was close and chances like this didn’t come around very often, wasting it was not an option. He slid a machete out of his backpack, being careful not to make a sound, and crouched down trying to avoid the moonlight letting his location become apparent. The beast was what, two, three gardens away? He had only ever been this close once before and he’d be damned if he was going to make the same mistakes again.

Mistakes, his mistakes. Were these the cause of their distance? Was he to blame? Would she have even been at that window if it weren’t for his mistakes? When they first started not talk to each other any more, around the time he stopped enquiring about her day, he would spend minutes and minutes in the shower, letting the near scolding sprays of water wash away what his life was becoming. He crucified himself for what was happening. In essence it was both their faults, but his self-loathing was certainly a part of it. For most of each day of the week he stared at nothing but the ground, the cracks in the pavement, the shiny lino floor of a café, the dust encrusted carpet. He finally realised they were doomed when he began to look forward to the commute. When the commute became his real home there was no going back. It was around this time that they began sleeping in separate rooms.

The hunter squeezed his way down one of those wooden walkways that lie between houses, where normally a dustbin is pushed along in the light of day. Tonight, however, with the silence that 4 am brings the hunter hunted. He was very close now, maybe only a fence between them. He could smell the beast, a rancid, acrid smell that made him light-headed. He was ready though, ten long years in the dark, traipsing up and down the countries motorways, in and out of the towns backyards with revenge the only thing on his mind had made him ready, had conditioned him for this one single moment. He had to slay the beast, for her he had to slay the beast.

Her screams still haunted the inside of his head. He heard the screams for the first time just as he was putting down his book and making himself comfortable for the night. Although without her by his side it took him a while to fall into slumber. The scream broke him out of his thoughts and made him careen into the master bedroom asking at the top of his voice what was up. An answer was not forthcoming. Instead her mouth continued to scream, her hands pointing in a myriad of different directions. She was stood by the bedroom windows looking at him and then down at the back garden. Just as he made an attempt to cross the bedroom, the windows shattered. Glass flew across the room. When he opened up his eyes he caught a glimpse of his wife’s serrated face before something grabbed her by the throat, cracking her spine in two. As he desperately clambered over the duvet he saw her look at him for the last time, once again with love. He looked back with regret a second before she was yanked from the window and into the night.

The Hunter stood up from the undergrowth and revealed himself to the beast. Two walls and a house pinned the beast in. The hunter stood at the other end of the garden ready to charge his prey. Only one of them would leave this property tonight. The beast’s red eyes flashed for a second, there was no recognition, just a hunger. The hunter didn’t stand on ceremony; no words would do justice to this event. He just began running, lifting his knife aloft as he pelted towards oblivion. There was no war cry, no shout of triumph, no bluster, he simply ran. The yells of glory were in his head, all the torment that drove his body across that perfectly cut lawn swirled around his brain as came ever closer to the culmination of ten years hunting. This was for her; this was for everything she stood for, for the good times before he came. This was for all the endless commutes, the constant repetition of a life wasted. Of opportunities lost, of risks left untaken, of projects left unfinished. This project would end. He could feel the beast’s hot breath on his face as he approached. He formed a picture of her in his mind, of that last lingering look and threw himself at the beast.

Dawn broke through the skyline. The chatter of the morning birds drowned out by the incessant noise of alarm clocks going off around the cul de sac. Men and women arose from encrusted sleep and then stretched their bones out as they waited naked for the shower water to warm up. All desperately trying to put off the commute.

WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T SAY ‘CORDUROY PANTHER MENTAL HOSPITAL’. PART 1

2010-03-24T04:55:00.001-07:00

Another rotting animal carcass; some kind of dog covered in dried blood drifted past the coach window. The fourth dead animal Samuel had seen since his eyelids had extracted themselves from each other. The bright moonlight was casting strange shapes across the barren landscape, which only served to make Samuel rather uneasy when combined with all the dead animals. The greyhound turned a bend and Samuel looked out at a bird eating another bird. He was the only passenger on the vehicle and had no idea what part of the United States he was in. He’d been asleep for hours after a heavy night in New York with his brother. His brother was a straight laced, straight talker who’d warned him against just heading out into the middle of America without a destination in mind or somewhere to stay. Samuel was beginning to think he was right, but his destination was the unknown.

The coach had been full when they departed the city. “How far we from the last stop, buddy?” The driver didn’t reply, if anything he seemed to accelerate the greyhound. Samuel was still groggy with sleep and decided to let the driver’s rudeness pass by. He looked upfront through the windscreen to the lights of a town. Modest in size, but it would have somewhere for him to eat, rest and drink. The coach rattled into the centre of the town and grinded to a halt, the driver left the bus without saying a word or looking back. Samuel watched him walk past his window, and got the distinct impression the elderly man was trying his hardest not to look in his direction. As if he wanted to be polite, but for some unfathomable reason had chosen to be rude.

“Screw it!” whispered Samuel to himself and headed straight for the bar he’d clocked on the approach to the car park. Time was ticking through the hour of ten and Samuel wanted to get as much liquor down his gullet as his liver would allow.

This town, whatever it’s name was deserted. Not a sole apart from him was about, it was ten o’clock on a Saturday night for Christ’s sake. Where was the party?

“Screw it!” repeated Samuel.

It was probably for the best anyhow, he just needed some alcohol to numb his stiff joints. The bar had a pink neon sign flickering above the door like a bad film noir; it was called ‘No. 3’. Samuel was curious as to the rather vague name and hoped to find out more inside. However, this thought was pushed quickly to the back of his mind when Samuel was hit by a wave of incredible heat. The bar was boiling. A fireplace roared violently to his left whilst the barman eyed him suspiciously to his right.

“Can I get a cold beer please?” Samuel made a point to emphasise the word cold. The only person apart from himself and the barman was an elderly gentleman sat at the far side of the bar. After the beer and two rums straight up Samuel felt the need for company, he hadn’t had a discussion with another human being since he said goodbye to his brother several days ago. He decided to force himself upon the grey browed man hulked in the shadows the fire formed across the bar. Samuel was expecting he would have to extract blood from a stone; this proved not to be the case.

“She was eighteen the last time I saw her. That was exactly seventeen years ago. You know why I remember the date?” Samuel figured he knew why, but resolved for politeness sake to leave the question rhetorical.

“Today is her birthday.”

When the two men had begun to speak Samuel barely listened he was to in awe of the size of the old man. In the shadows he had seemed small and frail, yet close up he was a hulk of a man, clearly still in good shape; his biceps were barely contained in his simple shirt. The man’s name was North and he was sixty years old, although his face looked like it had been on this planet a good deal of years more. North had welcomed the company. He said it stopped him from growing remorseful. He had loved his daughter dearly, he had raised her alone, her mother his wife having died in childbirth. All this was relayed to Samuel over the course of a few drinks.

“How did she disappear?’ inquired Samuel.

“No one knows, she left for the studios in the morning and never arrived there. I should explain seeing as you’re not a native of these parts. She was very famous at the time, a big TV star, in the paper almost every other day. She was a child-star, entering acting really early in life and at the time of her disappearance she had been on a very popular soap opera for five years. Audiences loved her and as the show progressed she had become the main character.”

“What was the show called maybe I’ve seen it?” North rather strangely ignored the question and continued with his story of woe.

“There are various theories as to why she may have vanished. Many believe she was kidnapped, you see the show was very controversial as well as popular. It ruffled quite a few feathers and many believe she was made an example of by some underground group.”

Then all of a sudden North pounded his large fist on the table and broke into floods of uncontrollable tears. Samuel was taken aback it was hard to watch any man cry, even more so a man of North’s size. Samuel looked around to see if the barman had heard and that was when he saw the two looking straight at him.

The two men’s stares didn’t deviate; there was no conversation between them, it was hard to determine if they were even together. Samuel couldn’t remember hearing the two enter. His mind brushed it off figuring that North’s sobs had beaten the two’s entrance to his ears. Suddenly Samuel’s bladder constricting around his insides demanding he piss right now, he made his excuses to North who was just about getting himself back together and headed towards the urinal. As he unleashed his own personal waterfall the two entered the lavatory. One unzipped his fly and proceeded to urinate whilst the second man took Samuel by surprise by leaning into the urinal between the two of them. He acted completely casual and continued to chat to the other of the two even though his jacket was covered in piss. The bizarreness of this strange social practice made Samuel uneasy and he desperately tried to hurry up his bladder. Then things got stranger as the one covered in urine leant backwards so that his face was next to Samuels and whispered “Corduroy Panther Mental Hospital.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s the name of the show she was on. We should know; we kidnapped the bitch. We also know where she is.”

“What, you mean…”

Samuel was interrupted by the other man who told his buddy to shake that thing off, and the two of them departed as swiftly as the arrived. Samuel noticed even as his brain was doing cartwheels that neither of them washed their hands.

Samuel left his hands unwashed as well as he slammed his body back into the bar. The two men had gone. North looked in his direction, almost in anticipation.

“Your daughter, I know where she is, your daughter!’ Samuel screamed nonsensically.

“Two men, your fucking daughter, Corduroy Panther Mental Hospital.” He continued to scream the name of the TV show as he ran out of the bar in pursuit of the two men. In the moonlight he could see the two of them walking through the cobbled town square. He chased after them shouting “Corduroy Panther Mental Hospital.” The men looked back at him stopping in their tracks. By now windows from the buildings above had opened and ashen faces were looking down on Samuel with shocked expressions.

“Why do you say those words out loud?’ said the two in unison as Samuel approached them.

“What does it matter?” replied Samuel.

The two pointed over his shoulder to the road behind where Samuel saw two back sedans pull up outside the bar and North pointing back in the their direction. Still in unison the two turned their attention back to Samuel and said, “Run, now. No questions just run.”

Samuel saw four black suited men start to sprint in his direction. He looked back at the two, “Run” they yelled at the top of their voices. Samuel ran.

In the next few moments all he could remember were the jeers of the people up above and the clatter of his shoes on the cobbled pavement before he felt a hand clench his shoulder and then black, pure pitch black.

In two days he would meet me, one of the writers of ‘Corduroy Panther Mental Hospital’.

THE HIDDEN CAMERA

2010-03-24T04:54:00.001-07:00

“This will all come together in the edit suite.”

If you were invited to dine with cannibals, but up until that point you were unaware of their leanings would you politely continue to eat the roasted human in front of you or would you stand up for what you believe in? If such an extreme set of circumstances is presented to you does innate middleclass behaviour determine your reaction? Can you really say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done?

It started as a simple student project. Student One was to be the star of the show, he had a natural ability with accents and voices so it made sense that he would be the one to be filmed. Student Two would control the equipment and in turn edit the footage together. They hoped that the final film would benefit both their degrees, not only affecting their grades, but also giving them a certain amount of critical kudos on campus by producing a gritty satirical look at the public’s perception and reaction to the different. They had seen countless hidden camera shows on television and figured they knew what needed to be done; the filming would have to take place in a populated area to maximise the publics potential. Student two would have to stay at a safe distance so as not to be discovered and only make him apparent when all the comedy and drama had been exhausted from the situation. Student One’s duty was to perpetuate the scene and to only drop out of character at the last moment for the big reveal. The student’s idea was simple, they were to attempt to expose people’s indifference to the insane or to put it more explicitly the freaks of society. It is not for this narrator to express an opinion on whether their intentions were to create art or to simple get attention as inevitably these types of projects do. The end of this paragraph is going to jump a few months forward to illustrate that attention was very much the outcome of this film project, as the two students footage was given a special screening at the end of the graduation.

Student One was nervous as the 134 bus pulled into Oxford Street on a bustling Friday lunchtime. Student Two was already positioned on the corner of Tottenham Court Road adjusted the camera for maximum effect. One had spent the last week practising various ticks and head movements as well as rehearsing the lines the two of them had written together. He just hoped he could pull it off. He was one of life’s worriers, he constantly sweated over up and coming events or stressed over something out of place he’d said to someone. He checked his body for cancerous lumps five times a day and every evening he’d developed some new symptom. In the various student bars or clubs the two of them frequented he was usually quiet and polite, never venturing his true opinion across the table. It was with a reluctant smile as he departed the bus that he realised it was only in acting that he felt free of his inhibitions. It was Student Two that was trying to make some sort of social-political point with this project not him; he was just hoping to escape himself in the floods of central London for a few blissful hours.

The young men greeted each other enthusiastically, after that there really wasn’t much to talk about, this had been in the planning for months and there was nothing left but to go to work. The record button was hit and Student Two focused the camera on the corner of the street where Student One was to try and stay. If he wandered to far the film would become redundant. They only had the resources for one camera so the situation was do or die, something Student One was fully aware of and obviously this had given him many the sleepless night recently. As he crossed the road he entered into character; his walking became more erratic and he flung his left arm out at random strangers, and as he reached the designated spot his eyes became wild and fearful of all around. As he tried to make this spot his own he realised he wasn’t the only unusual character about this busy London morning, a couple up ahead were having an expletive fuelled argument for everyone’s entertainment and just as they went out of earshot a bare-chested man with some kind of inscription tattooed across his body barged into him and continued down the high street. Just ahead of him a suited middle-aged gentlemen was passionately yelling tales from the Old Testament into a loud speaker. Student One knew he would have to make this performance something pretty special in order to stand out from crowd.

“They are coming! The Ambigalons are coming!” yelled Student One at the top of his voice.

This was the story the two of them had come up with. An alien race had landed on Earth and like a thousand B-movies from the 50’s had taken over the minds of the population, no one was whom they should be. And in this fictional universe Student One was one of the few human beings left who knew what was happening, who held the key to the secret.

“You are all Ambigalons, you are. Somebody help me I can’t breathe with this filth surrounding me.”

He quickly drew attention to himself, but as with the nutcases before him the city bowed its head and quickly passed him by. One could almost feel the cassette tape whirring around the camera and Student Two silent pleading for something spectacular to happen. He began to sweat worried that this science fiction infused ranting was not enough. That is when he grabbed out in desperation and that was when his personality type passed the point of no return.

The old woman lost her footing. What with her arm being held she inevitably fell backward taking the madman with her, she could fell a bone snap as she hit the cold wet concrete, and then another bone crack as the crazy fell on top of her. He continued to call her an ‘Amigon’ or something, she couldn’t tell and by now she was howling in uncontrollable pain. Suddenly the weight of man was lifted and a soothing voice was telling her help was on its way. In the corner of her eye she could see the ranting man being restrained by several large men, that was when she passed out.

“This will only take a moment Madam. I know you’re tired and need rest, we just need to go over what happened.”

“Where is he now?”

“He has been taken to an institution for the mentally ill. He will no doubt be prosecuted and kept there until he is deemed safe for a return into everyday society. Never the less for that to happen you need to make a statement.”

“Will he be in the court?”

“You don’t have to worry about that, he’s not well enough to be in attendance so only his appointed lawyer and close family will be there. It really is just a formality.”

“Okay, well I was going shopping when…”

Bang, Student One awoke. For the last month his eyelids had snapped open every morning, making his eyes instantly start to weep because of the painfully bright hospital lights. It didn’t matter because he felt like crying anyhow, except that wouldn’t have been in character. He slowly got out of bed walked across the room, slid into a corner and yelled at the top of his voice “You can’t imprison me for ever, the survivors will come for me. This planet is ours, not the Ambigilons.”

As he continued his ranting his insides were flooded with acid and his senses were attacked by anxiety as he went over his weaknesses once again.

He didn’t aim for the old woman in particular, she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When his eyes caught up with his hand, and he saw the startled pensioner struggling to break free of his grip, all he could think of was to keep going. The whir of the camera taunted his eardrums. The woman was stronger than her years suggested and they fell to the floor. Blood rushed to Student One’s face, not with the exertion but with embarrassment, how could this be happening he was assaulting an old woman not capable of defending herself? He couldn’t just stand up and hold his hands up whilst explaining he was putting on an act, this was all for a student film. He’d be arrested and how could explain this to people. The camera continued to whir. Student One continued to condemn the Ambigilons. These thoughts raced around his panicked brain in nano-seconds before his shoulders were yanked backwards. Two large men were restraining him, as people around them were shouting for and phoning the police. He looked down at the old woman howling in pain, tears and mucus congealing on her face; then she passed out. Whir went the camera as Student One held back his own tears and then shouted, “Get off me you damned Ambigilons.” A police siren could be heard in the distance. One carried on struggling when another member of the public smashed him in the face causing his entire body to go limp. The rest of the day was a blur; the effort it took to keep up the act was exhausting. How could he just say this was all pretend, it would be so shameful, he really should try and retain the little dignity remaining by explaining how he and a fellow student were attempting to highlight societies ills and lax attitude to the different in a light, insightful and what seems now like mistake, entertaining way. These detectives wouldn’t get it and really what kind of misjudged project is this. Better to play the coward and keep up the pretence. Maybe Student Two will sort this mess out.

The mental hospital smelt clean, too clean. It rushed up Student One’s nostrils and around his head making him feel instantly queasy, this feeling was no false reaction, it was shortly followed by vomit, which like One’s self-respect fell pathetically out of his mouth onto the sparkling black and white tiled floor. A guard directed him to a bed were a nurse wiped his mouth and injected something into his arm.

Bang, he awoke to the sight of the inmate next to him lying on his bed masturbating in full view of the rest of the ward. This would be the start of his day for the next month. The ward was pretty quiet apart from the screams, howling, inane mumblings and the whir of the CCTV cameras observing his every move. Days were long and in a desperate bid to fit in Student One worked out a routine were by he would move on an hourly basis from wall to wall, yelling out his observations and avoiding contact at all times.

“Hey You, Alien Hater. You got a visitor, get you ass over here.” The guard signalled to the main door with his hand. Student One shook himself out of reliving past events and followed the guard to the visiting area.

“You are a freaking genius.” Said Student Two.

“Yeah well.”

“I didn’t think you could pull it off. I really didn’t think you were that good.”

“I didn’t know what else to do. Why didn’t tell the police about me.”

“I figured you were sticking to our plan. You know, stay in character, stay in character. Didn’t think for a minute you’d take it this far. But, damn, did the film a world of good. Everyone at college thinks it’s gonna win awards and shit.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Same as what was told to your folks. That during the filming you went insane got you personality types mixed up, out of whack. What with you being so quiet in class and all, people ate it right up.”

“Great, now what?”

“What with news coverage this got. The films gonna blow right up, man.”

“I meant about me?”

“Well, now the films done, just come clean.”

“I can’t my parents would never understand. I mean I pretended to be mentally ill because I was too chicken to admit to being a jumped up student idiot.”

“So what? Your gonna wallow in here for eternity, treading the same white corridors until you die?”

“No, yes, I don’t know.”

“C’mon. Just walk back in there and start acting normal. Well, not acting that’s what got here in the first place. I mean just be you. You could even say you were insane for a short while.”

“Yeah, Yes, Yes I could do that.”

“See you on the outside soon, we’ll be hitting the big time together.”

The two students turned their backs on each other and departed. Student One, feeling hopeful, virtually ran back to the ward. Where to start he thought to himself? He figured he should just hold himself up straight and maybe start talking some sense at last. He would begin by approaching one of the guards and chat about something trivial. He felt vitality coursing through his veins; he was going get out of here finally.

He briskly passes the caretaker who is mopping the floor and strides towards the guard. The ‘wet floor’ sign doesn’t even catch his eye until he is horizontal in mid air. Then all he hears is a bang.

Black.

Snap.

Eyelids open.

“The Ambigilons are here, they are all around me.” Whispered Student One to himself a statement he truly believed.

“I know you’re an alien.” He yelled at the masturbating man. Then he went to attack him his brain incapable of thinking of anything else. The guards rush over and restrain One. It took several minutes to calm him down and during that time one could only look on at how Student One failed to fly over the cuckoo’s nest and instead turn his head towards the whirring CCTV camera as his dead eyes look straight into the lens and he says to himself:

“This will all come together in the edit suite.”

TIME APART

2010-03-24T04:53:00.001-07:00

The following are His diary extracts. I know he would want others to read His thoughts if only for them to be warned not to follow in His footsteps. He was a confused man who was trapped within himself, yet I loved him till the end.

Her July 2006

September 18^th 1965

I’ve always wanted to run down a train station platform with the string section of a grand orchestra reaching climax in my head, as the girl of my dreams takes one last lingering look over her shoulder for the man she so wants to be there. A slow forming expression of ecstasy breaking across her beautiful porcelain face as my figure draws ever closer shouting “I love you!” so loudly it makes my lungs bleed. The passengers already seated in carriages begin to realize these cinematic events are occurring before their very eyes and begin to cheer and applaud. I reach her and we embrace, our future is assumed happiness as the credits roll over the scene.

The ever-dawning realization of love is a feeling that encompasses so many unspoken complications, but always worth it or so I thought. Breaking up was something I always imagined could be resolved like a movie scene i.e. by making a sprint across Platform 2b at Charring Cross. However, in the cold bastard light of reality the last image of that woman I have replaying over and over in my mind’s eye is the look of regret in her eyes as the front door closed Her away for good. I should add no symphony was playing over this scene.

September 19^th 1965

The day was taken up with thinking what a waste of time that relationship amounted to. Inevitably after loss left the building with Her, along came self-doubt and a bleeding fist that I had thrown through the bedroom window. I can foresee weeks and weeks of an alcoholic induced coma that will lead to the most important decision of my life – It is time to stop looking for love.

October 12^th 1965

I’ve come to the most important decision of my life – It is time to stop looking for love.

October 13^th 1965

I have to state that I’m not just taking a break from women. I am simply not going to ever have a lustful or romantic thought. I will excrete them from my mind. Gone has the desire to settle down; admittedly my parents will struggle to see the years go by without the inkling of grandchildren, but frankly tough, this is my life. This isn’t simply a self-imposed version of celibacy, I am cutting love in all its forms, levels and layers out of my life. A pet will no longer be an option; they would only die before me. I will also avoid obligatory family meetings, over the years all my ties will be severed. I refuse to make new friends or find new idols to pray to, all will be left well behind in the life I once, but I underline I do not now enjoy. No man is an island. Fuck that!

December 31^st 1969

It’s the start of a new decade. I’ve spent the last five years or so taking a lot of solitary walks and eating many cold tins of beans, at one point I cut out drink because I literally loved it too much. I also stopped writing in this diary because it was becoming a crutch whilst battling the loneliness. I tore out years of entries a few months ago, but I figure I can make an exception on New Years Eve. By now I have no friends to drink with. I’d stopped going out on works parties, just on the off chance that I might be tempted to form a bond. When work life started becoming a passion I ended up moving on from one town to another. Whenever I felt the urge of affection towards a place or person, whether they ran the corner shop or filed my paperwork I resigned, settled the rent and moved on. The same was true if I fell for a cities charm. Unfortunately, I ending up loving the joy of travelling – avoiding love of any kind in its many forms was proving to be difficult. I decided to find the worst shithole in the country and the worst job within said shithole. I had to surround myself with hate. This proved surprisingly easy. I burnt all my money. Giving it away I figured would have been an act of love. I kept back enough to rent the smallest room in town and with no money there were days when all I ate was a margarine sandwich. Employment came in the form of toilet attending. There is nothing like the smell of stale facieses and rancid piss forty hours a week to give a man a pessimistic outlook on life. What with no money for a television or radio I resigned myself to a Dickensian lifestyle of falling asleep to little light most nights almost as soon as I returned from cleaning up someone else’s splat-fest. I’m thirty-two in two week’s, roll on the next celebrations.

March 2^nd 1972

I haven’t spoken to my parents in seven years; come to think of it I’ve hardly spoken to anyone properly in years. Occasionally on the long nights alone I have wondered what people I had known before Her had done in order to find me. I presume the police were contacted, and everyone from those times questioned – even Her. The concept of the guilt She surely must have felt fuels my concept of hatred even more, ‘Ha’ I shout at the decomposing ceiling, ‘Ha Ha Ha’. The police, of course, would have told my parents I have simply moved and given them my current address. It is strange remembering those first few years of ignoring the phone calls; I eventually ripped that plastic box of hell out of the wall and threw it into the street. I still live, work and shop for supplies within a 100-metre radius. It sounds ridiculous but it’s amazing how a lack of decisions can make you blissfully unaware. I should explain in more detail, it really helps to record your current surroundings.

I live in a small studio flat in Archway, London. To really emphasize my situation I should describe the ‘palace’. It is approximately the length of my body when in a lying position. The width is, well, approximately the width of my body when in a lying position. There is a sink in the far corner and a built in closet, which helps because otherwise I would have to sleep stood up. A communal shower is down the hall; apart from the bulb swinging from the ceiling there is no electricity. I did have a small shelf with a couple of books on it, but soon realized I was getting too attached to this glimmer of enjoyment, so I put up a picture of my workplace – The undeniable narcissism of this will sink in after a few more sentences. The rent for what is essentially a small room is incredibly cheap which is lucky considering my salary is paltry. I’m 3 years in working as a toilet attendant across the street from my flat. These public toilets are quiet rare in London these days, its one of those large amenities with an office in the middle where I spend most of my working hours making structures out of loo roll. Every hour I give this underground hovel a sweep and then scoop up the vomit and shit in the cubicles and mop up the urine from the floor that within the hour seems to have its own tide. I never speak to anybody; even a courtesy hello seems out of place when I’m brushing piss past a man with his dick in his hand. Occasionally I get a bunch of drunks down here who think its funny to urinate on each other as they leave shouting “twat” back at me; I tell them “Don’t worry about the mess, I’ve got it.” The toilets close at seven which is when I lock up and get a tin of beans from the corner shop, return home, eat them cold out of the tin (I have no way of heating them up) and then stare at the ceiling and cry myself to sleep.

December 15^th 1972

This morning I was awoke by the sound of the guy in the flat next to mine having some very serious stomach problems. I dressed quickly and went to work only to see this very man not even get across the street before needing the very amenities I work in. So for the second time in the last thirty minutes in two separate locations I heard the same man explode out of his ass. I didn’t clean the toilets at all today I just sat in the back office wondering exactly how I got myself into this position, for Christ’s sake I haven’t spoke aloud for two weeks. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.

May 1^st 1980

Still here. In the eight years since the last entry I have done absolutely nothing. I’m only writing in this diary today because it feels like I’m speaking to an old friend, someone who knows me. I think I’ve made a terrible mistake and I can’t escape from its grip. I simply can’t get out of this never-ending rut. Yesterday a man came into the public toilets, he was dressed in an immaculate suit that was at such a contrast with his surroundings, and I couldn’t help but be drawn to him like some sort of insane moth-man. It was only when he turned round to face me that I recognized him as Jeremy Lakeman, my best friend at school. In our youth we spent every waking hour with each other, and most nights sleeping over at each other’s houses, we dressed alike and cut our hair the same. Now a lifetime later he looks at me like something lying in the toilet bowls a metre to my left, washes his hands and leaves. I spent the rest of the day imagining a thousand different scenarios; all of them were about how Jeremy Lakeman’s life has panned out, his suit has informed these various scenarios with lifestyles of wealth and good living. My appearance has radically changed, my skin is deathly white, I’ve lost my hair and I have an unkempt yellow beard that hangs lank from my blotchy tear sodden face. I didn’t open the toilets today.

February 16^th 1981

I miss my mum. I miss my old friends. I miss Jeremy Lakeman. Most of all I miss Her. Why can’t I change? Am I instutionalised? I’m scared that’s what it is, I’ve self-imprisoned myself and now know I can’t hold a conversation with another human being. I have to end this game, this crappy charade. I will hand in my notice tomorrow.

February 17^th 1981

Didn’t hand in my notice, don’t say anything.

July 24^th 1992

I really have to leave this place. It was so bright and sunny this morning on the minute walk to the public toilets, maybe I should get a job working outside, a gardener maybe or something like that, yeah that would be great. Note to self, look into this line of work.

August 3^rd 1992

Couldn’t get past the end of the street. I haven’t been farther than 100 metres from my box room in twenty-three years. I just stood there at the end of the road looking at London rising up to the horizon. She’s out there somewhere.

September 1^st 1997

Today I realized that I am something of a local celebrity, a curiosity and a freak. It was late afternoon and I was doing my rounds mopping the floor etc… There were two school kids in the room with me or so I thought. They had been giggling to themselves for the last two minutes and it was starting to try my patience when the smaller of the two shouted out ‘Now do the Spiderman!’ within the next minute a cubicle door to my left crashed open and a third teenager leapt out thrusting his palm at me in the manner of the famous superhero, what left his hand was what in a few moments I would find out was semen. I stood there with nothing to say. They ran. I stood there with nothing to say. And I thought spitting at someone was disgraceful. Nothing.

January 30^th 2000

I’m sixty-two years old; I can’t afford to retire as I have no savings and nothing to do even if I did. Never the less, the council will retire me in the next few years if they haven’t forgotten me.

April 1^st 2005

I saw Her today. Her. I saw Her, across the road from the corner shop. Her hair was obviously greyer and the years had wrinkled her face, but I knew it was She. Maybe She lives round here. Tomorrow I will be in this spot. I must speak to her.

April 2^nd 2005

No sign of her.

April 3^rd 2005

Did I imagine it? Was it a vision seeping into my mind just to tease, taunt and tell me where I cocked up?

April 1^st 2006

I have never been happier. No time now, later.

June 8^th 2006

I will be dead within the month. I am 68, it’s not too young, but then it’s not that old either. I’ve ruined my body with bloody mindedness, or at least that’s what She keeps telling me. She is by my side as this is being written, I am too ill to even lift a biro so this final entry is being inscribed by my one true love. The last month or so has been the happiest of my life. She was in London visiting Her son when I finally saw Her again, I yelled and yelled, but no response. Finally I crossed over the imaginary line that had kept me a prisoner for so many years and literally ran down the street after her, that symphony building in my head. She saw through my ragbag of an appearance and simply embraced me; I can’t thank you enough for that moment. Shortly after that She persuaded me to come to Her home in the North of England where She told me about Her life since 1965. She married five years after we split and shortly after that had a son, her husband died in a car accident ten years ago and since then She has led a simple life in the home in which I now lie. I am too ashamed to tell Her of my escapades, so She will read this after I am gone. I am granted a kiss after this is done, so I’m going wrap this up quick smart. I know I’m dieing not of some disease or medical reason, but of a crushing, unpalatable, inconsolable, damning sense of regret. I regret letting her walk out that door in ’65 and I absolutely regret cleaning up other men’s shit for thirty-seven years.

A BAND APART

2010-03-24T04:48:00.001-07:00

I have never been covered in this much sweat, and not all of it my own. The funny thing is I simply don’t care. This is due to the fact my excitement levels have reached their limits; adrenaline is pumping through my veins at an uncontrollable rate. Walking through the ever-increasing crowd of people I realize I’m not the only one on a natural high, several people have actual pissed themselves, they are stood there in pools of their own creation with ear-to-ear smiles on their faces. Its hard to believe I’ve finally made it to this large clearing surrounded by tall exotic trees and watching the sun set, patiently waiting for the reason we are all here…

The reason is really quite simple; I applied to an advertisement in the classifieds. There on page forty-six surrounded by hair replacement therapies and boob jobs was a small ad with a simple black border and within the border it read:

THEY

Debut Performance

Will change your life forever

Be at coordinates 10° 39’ south 42° 12’ east

June 16^th 2003

What struck me as unusual was the location; unfortunately I couldn’t read map coordinates so had no idea where this gig was to be held. I guessed it was some attempt at being cool and mysterious, it was probably just some club in central London. Never the less, this vague advertisement stayed with me all day long, rattling around in my skull. Certainly this band was confident, maybe such abundance in bravado is worth checking out. On my way home from work I decided it was and popped into the nearest music store. Once inside I realized I had no idea what sort of music ‘They’ played. Wandering back and forth between isles like a demented zombie I looked under every ‘T’ in every genre of music from singles to albums. I suppose ‘They’ may not have released anything yet. “Nope” was the curt reply the blank looking Sasquatch at the information desk gave me. Leaving the store I thought to myself what the hell, I’ve got nothing but TV dinners and soaps to look forward to why not play detective for the evening.

I hadn’t been to the local library in years; my actual membership card termed me as a Master rather than a Mister. The library had the pieces of information I needed; access to the Internet and detailed maps. I grabbed my note pad and sat down at the nearest terminal, first thing first lets find out what music this band play. I’m pretty easy to please, but the last thing I needed to waste my time on was Christian rock or a steel band. The only object I looked at other than the computer screen was the wall clock, somehow four hours had passed. ‘They’ simply didn’t exist, at least not in cyber space. This stumbling block was not going to stop me; there were obviously hundreds of possibilities for the lack of information on this band. They could be just starting out, some kind of garage band exuding a whole lot of confidence. Or I could have missed something in the last few hours; they could be from abroad or a famous stadium band using a pseudnyme at a secret location. I digress, whatever ‘They’ were I now had to see them live.

The lights across the hall turned off.

“I’m afraid your gonna have to leave Sir.”

It was time to go, I grabbed a bundle of local reference and world maps as well as any other travel guide I could find. The assistant just stood to the side of one of the dark rooms looking peeved; I don’t think this was a job that gave her any kind of satisfaction, a feeling I could certainly emphasize with.

The lights turned on. God my flat looked lonely that night, that’s a lie - I was lonely that night. I had been stepping out of myself all afternoon, what was I doing spending this much time essentially organizing a night out. I was researching it for Christ’s sake, what a loser. I fell asleep that night drunk and dribbling with a reference map covering my face. The night may have led to self-pity, but I did find the co-ordinates. Just off the coast of Africa.

With daybreak came hope and the idea of adventure. That day I walked around like a robot set to automatic. I turned off everything that may have impeded my mission. This included doubt, fear, and wallowing in the previous nights misery. I finally had to do something for me, not some pre-programmed notion of what my fucking life should be. In this order I booked a ticket out of the country, resigned and broke the news to my parents. I felt so free, however, money was an issue and I would have to work my way towards ‘They’. My job only gave me enough income to sustain a day-to-day existence. The future was always something that was happening now rather than later. So, you could say that quitting my job in order to embark on some foolish boy’s own adventure across the globe with no money or experience of traveling, and no real idea of where I was going, to watch a band play some music I’d never even heard – on my own, was possibly a mistake. You have to understand that what else was I supposed to do, carry on living in a loop that consisted of work, sleep, redundant TV and masturbation.

“No way, seriously no way!” was the last thing I said to my mother before hanging up the payphone and boarding a plane to southern Italy. Italy was as far as my bank account would allow, thank God for budget airlines. To get to Africa I would need to find work. A work colleague’s second cousin had rushed through the various permits and visas in advance, so I was ready to go. June 16^th was three months away.

Those trinities of time passed by like a montage from a Hollywood movie. Imagine a pumping rock tune kicking off to a picturesque shot of me working as a waiter in Rome, with a faint image of a calendar dissolving into the background. The calendar is an old fashioned make and the pages are blown off camera one by one by an invisible wind. Meanwhile, the montage continues in the foreground, the audience is shown a rapid succession of images showing me working my knuckles to the bone, mopping my brow and dropping plates, while a fat mustachioed cook yells at me. However, as the song hits its key change we see that it’s not all work, work, work, I meet a girl and we make love till the end of the second month. A lost soul like myself she to leaves everything behind as we travel to Africa, Now an old pirate-like map replaces the calendar and a red line moves across the cinema screen showing our progress to ‘They’. The music ends and the picture fades to black.

Nacla was a bustling, dust-covered port in Mozambique. I had never seen a town or people like this before; their cracked faces seemed to offer the possibility of a thousand stories. It comforted me to think whilst walking through the numerous fish markets I to was bringing my own tale of adventure to the table. That afternoon certainly proved to be like something from a Robert Louis Stevenson novel. Mary was going to be angry, I was already half an hour late. On reaching this small costal town we were forced to separate due to the lack of hotels and rooms within the towns establishments. Mary was trying to secure passage to the co-ordinates from the advert. This was the last part of the journey. The problem was that this village had a palpable violence about it, which made us both uneasy. We had arranged to meet in a bar called ‘A Besta’ which translates to ‘The Beast’, which we had been assured was full of various sea faring gentlemen who for the right amount of silver crossed over their palms would take us wherever we needed to go. On approaching ‘The Beast’ I felt a deep pang of regret, the place was so run down it was almost underground. We should have met out in the open, I prayed to God Mary was safe. I hadn’t told her yet, but I was deeply in love with her. I took a huge intake of breath and entered the jaws of ‘The Beast’.

Mary was across the other side of the bar, surrounded by three unwholesome looking men all with one aim, rape. The last few months of travel had built up my confidence immeasurably and I didn’t hesitate in stepping between Mary and the three threats. I can only assume that I surprised the men, because the repercussion of taking Mary from their grasp was a set of evil glares that would continue until we left. I bought a drink and asked the landlord who, what and where? He pointed to a dark corner where, sat at an unstable table, was a man covered in shadow wearing a long scarlet coat and moving not one muscle. We approached careful together, I asked if I could take a seat, a reply was not forthcoming. I downed my drink and sat down regardless. Muscles continued not to be moved by the scarlet man. Five minutes passed and in that time I explained where we wanted to go and when we would return. The scarlet man stared directly into my soul and then said in a voice, so deep it could start a tidal wave ‘2,241936 Meticals, tomorrow, five am’. This was all he would ever say to me.

The following morning, still glad to be alive I might add, we met the Scarlet Man at a small boat held barely together, she bobbed up and down precariously on the water as if she too was scared. However, the health of the ship didn’t concern me on this fine morning for two reasons: One, I could taste my goal, London seemed like another lifetime and right then in that blistering early morning sun I could actually feel myself metamorphis into a different and better man. Two, I was distracted by how busy the port was. Hundreds of other people were there all waiting for rides to the same island. As we pulled out into the African ocean I kissed Mary and pointed out at the fleets of ships of all sizes that followed in our jet stream.

The island was an hour from the mainland. We spent the time topping up are tans and staying away from the Scarlet man. On approaching the island we realized there was no port for the ship to dock at. The resulting answer was to swim to shore. I had never arrived at a destination like this, it was always so civilized and proper exiting a train or plane with uniformed humans at ever turn to take my bags or point me in the right direction. Emerging from the sea onto a golden beach where I was sure I would witness the greatest gig of my life really was the only way to do it. As I drip dried I could see hundreds of other music and adventure lovers entering the jungle. The land around us looked untouched by human hand. I looked across to Mary to see she to was struggling to contain a bright and beaming smile. We didn’t need to say anything apart from hurl ourselves at the jungle and the glories ahead. To get to the exact co-ordinates I had from the newspaper advertisement it took just under three hours of tough terrain. Some people had the foresight to bring machetes with them, so we tended to follow in their wake. Trying to contain my excitement was proving difficult. I was not the only one, during the trek we constantly heard howls and cries from other travelers counting down the minutes to the gig.

We finally reached the clearing and only then did I realize how many people were searching for the same thing as me, the answer to an unposed question. There weren’t just British people at the gig; nationalities from across the globe were emerging from the jungle every minute.

So that was my journey to this spot where I stand surrounded by eager fans of a band that no one has ever seen before. If I stand on tiptoe and look dead ahead, I can see a small black stage. All I can hear is a constant chant of ‘They’.

“What kind of music do you think they’ll play, Gerry?” says Mary

“I really have no idea, babes, It’s gonna be pretty different though. I just know it.”

I should tell her know how I feel about her, no, it’s not the right time. I’ll do it after the gig.

“Something’s happening.”

“What’s going on? I can’t see.”

“Looks like three guys, hard to tell though, they’re wearing hooded shrouds.”

“And?”

“They are all… Weird, pushing something black in front of them.”

“What is it?”

“Umm, guns, looks like old, gatling guns.”

“What like a stage prop?”

“I don’t think… Did you here that scream? Something’s not right.”

“Is that gunfire?”

“They’re shooting at us. Run, Mary run.”

“I’m getting trampled, Babes. BABES…”

“Where are you? Mate, have you seen a… shit, you’re bleeding… Wha …”

MASS GRAVE FOUND OFF THE COAST OF AFRICA
The largest ever-mass murder was discovered late last night on a remote island of the eastern coast of Africa. The number dead is thought to be in the thousands; however, this is yet to be confirmed by the African authorities. They all died from gun wounds. 500 Britons have been counted dead.
Among those a Gerald Brundle, whose parents, after not hearing from him for several months hired a private detective to discover his whereabouts, it was this man who discovered the dead. It is unknown why or how so many people ended up on the island; locals from the nearby costal town, Nacla, have mentioned some sort of party. Drugs have been discovered on many of the dead but nothing to suggest that this was the cause of such a disaster. Mass suicide has been put forward as a theory, but police believe this not to be the case as many bodies where found in the jungle as if they were fleeing the scene and subsequently executed.
Presidents from around the globe have promised a full investigation into this horror, but insiders are quoted has believing that with no survivors this is an unsolvable case and in time will become myth. For more on this story see pages 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.

HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU

2010-03-24T04:46:00.001-07:00

I’m going to cut you. Your expression is one of fear and that is as it should be, for pain is all that welcomes you. Where as I have only pleasure, unadulterated pleasure to look forward to. I always knew this moment would be magnificent. Anticlimax was something I was aware of twenty odd years ago, but as time passed it became clear that such a pathetic soul as you was never able to let me down. I have been your shadow since you graduated just over two decades ago. You were picked from obscurity to be my guide, and in an effect you controlled me. You chose where I would live, you chose where I went at nights, and if you stayed in I stayed in. If you went on holiday I went with you. You just didn’t invite me.

Look at you crying, it’s sinking in, isn’t it? That was rhetorical, I realise a broken jaw would halt any such sound. I was waiting for you when you got your first job, at your marriage to the lovely Annette, at the birth of your daughter. I saw the guilt on your face when you first cheated and the numerous times since. I’ve stood above you when you’ve slept at night, I’ve even whispered into your ear what would befall you on this very night only yesterday. But the unconscious is a cruel beast and you are a stupid man since you knew this day would come anyway.

You have given me a great life Mr. Sinner. It is to end now in this wet alleyway in a pain I can’t express. I am then going to leave you for dead with the knowledge that this will be repeated twice more this very night.

Bacon, sausages, beans, hash browns, black pudding, eggs, toast and a cup of tea; that was what Joseph looked down upon on Wednesday morning. Study was hard and this was a good reward. Joseph had been hard at it for several months now, tonight was guaranteed to be a good night, with many more to follow as graduation loomed. And then, well, and then the big wide world of opportunity and hopefully some cash prizes. But before all that Joseph had to relieve himself. Betty’s Café had the filthiest toilet in town, but Joseph’s bladder didn’t care. There was only one cubical at Betty’s, so he locked himself in, picked up the crumbled paper left from the previous occupant and sat and relaxed. After a short moment Joseph looked up at the door to see amongst the various scrawls of graffiti a large almost luminous inscription, far larger than the rest, and carved into the wood with a much stronger sense of purpose. Joseph’s bowls seized up as he read:

The date is May the 3^rd and you Joseph Mills will die on this very day in twenty years from now.

Questions darted back and forth across Joseph’s brain. How did the author of this inscription know he would be in the café on this date? He had told no one he was going to grab a bite. In addition to this how did said author know he would frequent the amenities at Betty’s? He could easily have gone home first. Was the graffiti artist still in the café? Is this just a practical joke or a bona fide genuine threat? Per chance another Joseph Mills lives in this city? A mantra started repeating itself in Joseph’s head ‘forget about it – forget about it – forget about it.’ His thoughts were interrupted by his bowels finally relaxing.

Two weeks passed Joseph followed the advice in his mantra and the inscription became a distant memory. Graduation came and went with all the booze and celebration you would expect from such an event. Joseph even met a girl. Her name was Annette. Their glances at each other were followed by dinner and a night of some very serious dry humping. Annette wanted to wait, Joseph not particularly happy with this, sort satisfaction in the arms of a prostitute on the way home. Everybody happy except the shadow.

_____

At twenty-six hangovers start to hurt. It is the body’s way of saying youth has now left the building. You can continue to do what you’ve been doing but it’s going to involve a lot of pain. Joseph’s crust infested face turned to look at Annette, how come she looked so good, bitch! She had made last night difficult for him. The wedding rehearsal was boring enough as it was without her taking it so seriously. With Joseph, irritation is always beaten into submission by drink and hence we arrive here, looking down on a bed accompanied by a sick angry man and an innocent girl. Joseph dragged his sorry ass into the living room of their flat and looked out into the horizon. Then all of a sudden his eye was caught by something. Stuck to the outside of the windowpane was a piece of paper. Joseph took a step closer; a feeling of familiarity swept throughout his bones as a read what appeared to be a note.

Tick tock time to take stock. You’ve done well for yourself Joseph Mills.

Enjoy the next fifteen years.

Emotion number one was fear; that after a check of the kitchen and bathroom was followed by bemusement. Joseph knew this was the same hand as the graffiti artist, the use of his full name was a trait only used by this author and Joseph’s mother. Why and how was where the questions began, but before he could ask himself how the note got onto the outside of the living room window situated on the seventh floor, his mind raced back to what he had forced himself to forget, the innate creepiness bugged him out. Joseph washed his face and forced himself get practical. First he tried to reach the note by opening the window and reaching out; his arm didn’t stretch that far. In conclusion the note could not have been placed on from the inside, even with some kind of device it would be impossible to attach the paper to the window so securely. Also the only people to be at the window from the outside are the window cleaners who had not been here for two months and they use pulleys and trays to get where they’re needed. Joseph went back into the bedroom and fell asleep scared.

In the years to come when Joseph was asked to recount anecdotes of his wedding, to go into detail about how he felt, to recall intimate details by his wife Joseph would lie. Not out of deceit, but out of a complete lack of knowledge about what happened that day. Annette married a zombie. Joseph even hesitated when asked, “Do you Joseph Mills take…” The use of his full name made his paranoid mind even question the vicar’s intentions. The honeymoon was no different, if you asked Joseph on his return what part of Venice impressed him most he would come up with some cliché-ridden reply. During their two weeks in Italy Joseph made love like a machine, his mind back at their flat going over and over the note. On the plane back Joseph instinctively knew he only had fifteen years left to live, so he got up from his seat walked towards the toilets at the front end of the plane grabbed an airhostess, told her to shush, bundled her into a toilet cubicle and fucked her.

The shadow chuckled at Joseph Mill’s decision on how he would live the rest of his fifteen years.

_____

“Why the hell now?” was the question Joseph posed to the buxom lap dancer straddling him on hearing the news that his baby daughter had just been born.

Pissed and coked up Joseph went to the bathroom to freshen up before departing for the hospital. He looked at his thirty one-year-old face and laughed a hearty laugh at himself. The bright lights of the maternity ward dazzled his eyes, making it look like he was on the brink of tears when he came face to face with Annette and as always she fell for his charms. Bored already, Joseph was introduced to his daughter. He knew he loved her just like he loved Annette, but they could do nothing for him, he was destined to live his life at 100 mph and they were just pit stops on his journey. Again he chuckled at himself, the baby giggled along with her dad. ‘Dumb kid’ thought Joseph as he wandered around the hospital bed. He picked up the chart hanging off the bedside rail as if he knew what he was doing and that’s when he sobered up:

Congrats old friend. She’s lucky she resembles her mother. Oh, so moved I almost forgot to say ten years. Sorry.

The cab ride home was a long one and it gave Joseph time to dwell on everything that had just happened. The author’s comments were something that now lived within him every day, looping into it over and over. He’d hired many private detectives after the police came up with nothing, but they hit the same dead ends. Of course Annette knew nothing of this, she’d only thought of one thing since they got married, having a child. Joseph had put being a father off until the right moment, that moment was when being the head of a family guaranteed him a place on the board of governors. It did and now he had carte blanche to do what the hell he liked. Take this week for example he spent the majority of it snorting coke off his mistress’s belly. He’d only needed to visit the office once and that was to interview a prospective employee and in Joseph’s eyes even that was a complete waste of time; he was met by a totally unsuitable man badly dressed, greasy and incoherent.

The cab’s tires calmly ground over the gravel drive leading up to Joseph’s grand house. Joseph entered the house and was greeted by the housekeeper. They looked at each other neither needing a reminder of the events of the day. Joseph undid her blouse cupped her left breast in his palm and pushed her into the wall.

_____

“Can I mummy?” Annette looked at her daughter and gave in. She reluctantly sliced a small piece of birthday cake. It ruined the aesthetic look of the cake, which now read ‘Happy Birthday lice’, but it didn’t matter any more.

“Where’s your daddy?” said Annette desperately trying not to cry, she failed and fell to the floor with her head in her hands.

Alice put her arm around her mother; she was always the strong one. Joseph was in fact in a cell down town, having beaten a man into unconsciousness. Annette and Alice did not know where he was because he’d used his one phone call to inform his other woman he’d be late. Why had Joseph half killed a man?

It was midday; the town centre was heaving with lunchtime shoppers and Joseph was pissed off. He had already drunk a fair amount and was in the process of finding more liquor, when out of the crowd came a large bare chested man. At first Joseph found the sight amusing. Steadily the man came closer and closer, as he did so Joseph realised he had a large tattoo covering his big barrel chest. As the chest came into focus Joseph’s senses went out of control:

Good Day to you Joseph Mills. It is the penultimate chapter, always my favourite. See you soon.

These words were engraved in a glorious gothic flourish that spanned the width of the man’s chest. However, for Joseph this was not the time for artistic appreciation, it was a time for violence. Time altered, from the slow motion approach of the tattooed figure to his hyper-realised fall to the pavement. The big man didn’t know what had hit him and would not know for four months when he came out of his coma. In the meantime Joseph was released on bail. He never explained the incident to Annette; he couldn’t explain it to himself. For fifteen years he had tried to push this haunting to the back of his mind only for it to crawl its way to the front, a place in which it had now planted itself for good. Whether in a cell, crying in the shower or pleading for his job Joseph wrangled with his conscious nightmares, a mad man in the making.

______

Twenty years ago when Joseph was still at university, he didn’t see himself at 41 traipsing back to his cramped bed sit from the nearby train station at the dead of night in the pissing rain. The last five years were a blur of depression. The one saving grace if you can call it that was that the barrel chested man dropped the charges after he had fully recovered. His decision seemed a strange one as no explanation was given. When questioned about the tattoo the big man replied “This guy said he’d give me ten grand if I got exactly what he requested tattooed across my chest and walked down Oxford Street at midday on May 3^rd. I tell you I’m not a rich man, which I think he knew and thought hell to it.”

A description was given to the investigating officers but it unsurprisingly came to nothing. In the last five years Joseph lost his job and his house to addiction. His wife trapped in and locked out of Joseph’s life at the same time continued to look after Alice as best as possible. She raised an intelligent beautiful girl that Joseph through all his troubles had grown to love. There are no more women, even if he wanted their touch they were unlikely to come near him.

His confidence at an all time low Joseph nearly didn’t notice the shadow emerge from the darkness. Blood hit the floor before he did, this was followed by twenty minutes of extreme torture, it was too late for anyone to hear or see; Joseph was a lost cause. He was still breathing when there was a lapse in the onslaught. He took the opportunity to let the decisions of the last two decades flicker book through his memory. After the book stopped flicking the shadow said,

I’m going to cut you.

OTHER INTERESTS

2010-03-24T04:45:00.001-07:00

Have you ever craved attention so much you wished something hideous would either happen to you or someone close to you? Let me go into more detail, for I feel that to leave such a blunt statement drifting in the air between us would create a false impression of myself and cause a certain uneasiness on your part. To start I am not a psychotic, murderer or a loon, I guess I’m just a guy that’s been sidelined. I’m always the one who picks the wrong seat at a restaurant and ends up grasping at snippets of conversation thrown at me in politeness; I’m the guy invited somewhere through guilt. It’s in these lows I wish something would happen in my life, either to myself or a close family member, so somebody would finally pay attention to me. That is why I Bartholomew Drake threw myself out of my bedroom window.

_____

I can’t believe that prick got in the way, the bullet wasn’t meant for him. Fucking weird situation, when you’re about to shoot a police officer you don’t expect a one armed, one legged, bearded man to leap out of his wheel chair and intercept the bullet. Either way it got the desired effect, because I can hear those helicopters getting closer. They are nearly overhead now and the sirens aren’t far behind. I’ve been crouched down in this bush for nearly an hour, maybe its time to move, I really fancy some hard running. I want to run so hard it gives me Danny Brundle a stitch.

_____

The window incident caused me no attention whatsoever. Firstly I live on the second floor of an apartment block. Don’t get me wrong it hurt, it really hurt. The flat below just carried on watching T.V, even though I’m sure they must have seen me fall past the window. I just led there in the hope someone would come and help; after four hours I had to help myself up. I’m pretty sure someone was laughing from across the street. I hobbled back upstairs and jumped out of the bedroom window again - y’know just to be sure no one missed it the first time. The result remained the same; the only difference being this time I think someone was actually laughing as I was falling. You have to understand I’m left with no choice, I don’t want to kill myself and I just don’t think I can shoot my parents. So the only way to get my work colleges and neighbors to want to see me is to injure or paralyze myself. Large bruises, the injury I suffered from the window incident, don’t really get peoples attention, especially when they’re on your ass and in a last ditch attempt to get somebody to notice you moon to the entire fucking post office… Sorry I got a little heated there, that’s not like me. Anyway jumping out of a window didn’t work so I cut off my arm.

_____

I’m a fugitive, a god damn outlaw. I can’t believe I made it this far. I remember the first time I ran for my life. Jesus, that was a good day. That’s when I realised this was something I wanted to get addicted to. Not like cigarettes or drugs, where you take a puff or a swallow, knowing that it’s fucking with you. I wanted the self-conscious rush of being chased to become the one and only thing that mattered in my life. I wanted this addiction to overpower and change everything, y’know it has. My girlfriend left long ago, she didn’t even last the early days when I was getting caught. I can’t really blame her; I’d have gotten tired of patching up cuts and bruises long before she gave up. She was the first person I got to chase me as a matter of fact. I was bored one evening and decided to pinch her behind until she got so enraged she actually chased me around our little bed-sit. It felt good, so the very next day I went out looking for a fight.

_____

Blood really stains. I haven’t worn that cardigan since cutting off my arm; it’s totally ruined. I know what your thinking why not just throw it out, with your good arm of course. I mean what ‘arm’ can it do, sorry, so many puns so little time. I find self-depreciating humor endears me to the opposite sex, one arm doesn’t. Anyway, endearment is the reason I kept the cardigan, I used it in my lies and embellishments. When people did come round for dinner, the blood stained woolen garment was proudly brought out to help me illustrate how my arm was torn off in a terrible combine harvester accident whilst I was helping out on my brother in laws farm. When in reality I actually lost my arm in the kitchen to the right of the dinner guests one Tuesday evening with a lot of painkillers, an electric carving knife and a hack saw. I remember that first dinner party so vividly, even with my disability and well-rehearsed tale of woe, the four guests ended up chatting between themselves whilst I struggled to hold a CD and open the player at the same time.

_____

Prick, twat, shithead, I shouted something like that. I wish I could remember exactly, but I guess it doesn’t change the story either way. Anyway, the verbal abuse was followed by a kick to the knackers and a punch to the girlfriend’s face. I admit I had probably guaranteed the chase with the bruised testicles, but I was having fun. The location was the dirtiest, roughest pub in the local area. I’d had a drink first, scanned the bar for a gang or a group, and settled on a collective of five thirty something men who dominated the air space with coarse chatter. The rest of the pub stayed at a low hum as if in fear of this pride of pricks. I remember thinking as I burst out of the entrance that I weighed 18 stone. I was badly out of shape in those days and the thrill of the chase although great was short lived. My face took a pounding; I can assure you that cement don’t taste great, especially accompanied by a bitter blood sauce. I should state at this point in my tale that the cracked skull and broken ribs where all worth it and taught me several valuable lessons. One; never give up. Two, get fit, and three this feels fucking brilliant. In the year that followed I lost Michelle, but gained a six-pack and several great chases.

_____

Scaramanga, there’s an interesting and exotic man for you. A far more attractive prospect than Bond, he’s just a company man. Scaramanga is a very successful entrepreneur; this is evident from his luxury island apartment and laser gun. He’s also a great shot, a hit with the ladies, has a midget sidekick and for a party piece has three nipples. I figured I needed a party piece something to surprise people if an uncomfortable pause sneaked into the conversation, something to make partygoers mouths drop to the floor. So one Bank holiday, influenced by ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’, I tried a variation on the nipple theme and sliced both mine off. Trust me its one hell of a party piece, and mouths sure do drop, they really do hit the floor with a clunk. When I pull up my shirt to reveal two circular scabs (that have never really gone away) people remember me, unfortunately no one speaks to me. Shortly after the nipple affair, as it was referred to at work, I was fired. The bosses claimed I’d been neglecting my duties, but I knew that was just balderdash for ‘get the freak out’. For a year after that making people notice me became a minor concern in my life; I became a hermit in my own apartment. My disability allowance and the dole kept me in sufficient surroundings, and with this newfound time I could concentrate on my facial hair. I always thought I had a boring face, I was pale with a trim and tidy side parting, my ears were small and podgy and my eyebrows so faint they were almost translucent. So for the next year I grew a beard, which turned out well because it’s a bitch to shave with one arm. My only visitor that year was a strange longhaired fellow who simply wanted to have dinner with me, he was like an angel who sat there and listened to me for me, not to simply see my scabby nips or the butt of my arm. When he left I felt a new sense of connection, a real desire to meet humans again. With my new bearded image it was time to breath fresh air.

_____

Now a true, one hundred percent bona fide addict, the high needed to be raised. Pissing off football hooligans was becoming tedious and unexciting. I was at a loss, so I upped the stakes. Instead of the possible outcome of having my head kicked in I needed the threat of death. If caught I needed to have the barrel of a gun pushed hard into my temple. That was the fear I installed into myself when I got heavily into debt at the largest gangster filled illegal casino in Northern London. It was glorious fun to lose with such abandon, dishing out the I.O.U’s left right and centre. People looked at me like I was some kind of senseless loser. Little did they know this was all a careful plan to get the owners to hunt me down and kill me. Six months after entering the casino for the first time I was a hundred grand in debt with a price on my head. Since then I’ve moved house three times, been involved in a car chase through the local shopping centre, and a year ago had a bullet graze my arm. But through all this I have never been caught; I’m telling you I’m beyond simply good at this, you can’t catch me. That’s why the cops will never lay a hand on me. One day they’ll make a movie of this time in my life.

_____

Six months ago to this a day I got beaten by a homeless guy, I don’t mean physically, I simply meant mentally. Since plucking up the courage to leave the house I had become a regular at the local park, feeding the ducks, sitting around on benches, letting the summer sun hit my face. By this time I had had no contact with another person for a year or so, I was twenty-five and living my life like an old widower. In this pit of despair my complete and utter annihilation was imminent. Let me backtrack a little, the reason I was in the park must be made clear. I was there for pity, I’d put on my best puppy dog eyes, plus with the lack of a limb I was surely a guaranteed conversation opener to a passer by. Let me warn you now if you’re ever in my position the old park trick does not work. Unless you’re a stupid little smelly homeless guy with a stinking rat eaten mongrel at you feet, then of course young girls will find you oh so bloody cute. Unbelievable, my current condition is a work of art for Christ’s sake. He’s just unlucky; I’m a deliberate accident.

_____

You know what’s coming next of course? I can’t just rest on my laurels. Having a small herd of gangsters putting a price on my head is all well and good, but like any drug it only lasts for so long. I want a permanent sense of danger, I want my senses on full alert twenty four seven. So I decided two weeks ago to kill a copper. From that decision my life kicked into overdrive. The plan was simple; a gun was all I required and then I simply had to shoot a policeman in a public CCTV recorded place in the city.

_____

One-nil to the homeless gentleman. There is no way I was going to let this go, he wasn’t counting on how determined I was. He was definitely not expecting me to saw off my left leg. Admittedly he didn’t know who I was, but it helped me to think in this manner. Anger is a powerful tool it makes your stomach flip-flop and definitely helps take your mind off the metal saw embedded in your thigh. I really thought preparation was the key; just like the last time I hacked something off, I took countless tablets. They failed me, the pain was immense I passed out several times only to wake up in a pool of blood with the saw still protruding from my leg. I’d placed out several knives and scissors near by to help cut away skin and muscle, in order to get a wider angle at the bone. I never completed the task at hand; it was just too hard. With only one arm I struggled to steady myself especially with the rapid loss of blood. I eventually fell unconscious. I woke up twelve hours later in a bed bathed in the bright lights of a hospital ceiling. Apparently my predicament was brought to the attention of my downstairs neighbors when blood started dripping from the ceiling into their evening meals. When they finally burst through my front door they found me half dead in a carpet of crimson.

_____

It was the first morning of the rest of my life. Once upon a time in North London. It was a cold day. I tell ya, that day was all those things; I’d dreamt of this for so long, it had become a cliché. I felt like I was being filmed for a movie. I played hi-energy pop at full blast until the hour was upon me and then I walked calmly to the local shopping centre. I never let go of the gun it was always at the ready, cocked with my finger around the trigger the whole journey. No one gave a shit, and I’m sure they saw it. Before we get to the big bang, I should state that I thought chivalry, heroism, whatever you want to name a limbless member of ZZ Top giving his life for another, didn’t exist in real life. People only think of numero uno, selflessness is a figment of the imagination, or so I figured. Before the slow motion leap of death, the policeman screamed alerting all around to the imminent situation. As I said, just like a movie everything slowed. My cop turned to run as the bearded wonder pulled himself out of his chair and into the line of fire. The bullet hit him square in the chest and sent his already lifeless body flying into the policeman. Cars stopped, people yelled, I ran.

_____

Life is simply a distraction from hating yourself. That’s why I lopped off my arm in the first place. The pain was a relapse from the consistent self-loathing. Why hasn’t this happened? Why didn’t I do this? Why didn’t I do her? Blah, Blah, Blah! Maybe that’s why I threw myself out of that crappy hospital supplied chair; simply a distraction. Funny really that now looking down on my funeral from beyond the grave I should see the only real attention I’ve ever been given. Bar the vicar, one person has turned up, the policeman whose life I saved. He’s said nothing the whole time I’ve been watching. Just another lonely man weeping in a field of the dead I guess. I should have played the earnest hero long ago, this self-infliction hobby, this other interest I have only deters. Death is the real headline grabber. Whoever that man was that shot me, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have let me die a happy man.

_____

Shoot a disabled person and you really do become the nations public enemy number one. I found that out this morning on a TV screen in a shop window. People really hate me. It's gonna make this on the run lark a whole lot more fun I tell you. Can’t wait for all the good stuff that’s on the horizon, shoot outs, car chases, violence, you name it I’m at the centre of it all. Killing that man was the best thing I’ve ever done, fact. He’s made me infamous, fact. I’m happy, fact.

ONE POTATO TWO

2010-03-24T04:44:00.000-07:00

It began many years ago with a rubber band. Then there were the football cards, stamps, and records. The house is decorated with collections from all walks of life, from the mundane to the exotic, from the typical to the strange. Mother’s room proudly displays a collection of family portraits, all false smiles and squinting eyes as the flash permanently fixes the past. Opposite these frames are father’s five immaculately polished antique stopwatches, each still keeping perfect time. In the wardrobe hangs an array of beautiful floral dresses, and many conservative ties. The bathroom hoards collections of a different breed, including forty-four different coloured toothbrushes, a jar of toenail clippings, and eighteen small bottles of water dating back to 1985, one for each of the following years. From here we move into the son’s room, where Johnson takes the 408^th Polaroid of his hair, which now reaches his backside. He walks over to his desk takes out a dusty photo album opens it up and places the now exposed picture alongside last weeks almost identical image. Johnson then pauses to decide upon which of the one thousand biros neatly boxed up alongside the wall to write in the date with. Once the inscription is completed Johnson puts the pen down and replaces it with a red tack and takes it over to the far wall, which is covered by a gigantic map of the town in which he lives. It is almost completely crossed out. Johnson takes a step closer and erases number 14 Carson Close.

Johnson stood motionless for the next hour, passing the time with simple reminiscence. Using the crossed out houses of the map as triggers, Johnson recalled times gone by. It was the part of the week he enjoyed the most, falling into a trance and gliding through the corridors of his greatest collection, his memories. The map was simply a way of collating the data. It would be impossible to keep track unless you had a photographic memory like the little boy from number 2 Burrow Drive. Unfortunately Johnson was lacking that particular gift and had to make do with small red tacks to keep things in order. According to Johnson’s calculations he had only one home left to visit. Then his master accumulation would be complete; Johnson would have been invited to and eaten dinner in every single house of his god-for-saken hometown.

Johnson liked to remember his most recent dinner first. The menu consisted of a rather dry and pathetic lasagna accompanied by stale garlic bread, several root vegetables and a cheap supermarket wine, which Johnson thanked for ridding his palette of the taste of garlic but cursed for filling his mouth with vomit. The regurgitated meal ended up on the bathroom door; Johnson having failed to open the door also failed to stop himself emptying his stomach. The occupant of 14 Carson Close was not at all pleased. Johnson offered to clean up the splat which was now dripping onto the crimson carpet, but 14 Carson Close wouldn’t hear of it, pleading Johnson to go on back into the dining room and finish his drink. When Johnson decided to look in on her five minutes later he quickly retreated after hearing a flurry of swear words under the house owners breath. Johnson cut his loses and left soon after. Johnson smiled to himself; he found the image of number fourteen on her knees retching, highly amusing. These were the types of images that reminded Johnson why he pursued this obsession, unfortunately most of his visits consisted of banal conversations about soap operas, occupation, weather, or parents. However, once in a while, for the briefest of moments Johnson would find himself unexpectedly apart of something, something being companionship, a family, even love. Something is where Johnson always ended his dreams no matter what.

Johnson’s neck cracked as he turned to look out of the window, what he saw was where it all began. A year after the family had gone, the house was absent of mother’s singing and father’s snoring. Johnson stood in the same spot he stands now. A younger man to be sure but loneliness cloaked him then as it does now, in that year he had had twenty-two jobs (A healthy collection he thought.). Friends had left for the horizon, families were strangers, and neighbors were unknown. That was what struck him so strongly the fact that he was surrounded by unknowns. They were only divided by a wall, this he had to change. In that very instance Johnson decided to meet his neighbors. Ten minutes later he found himself seated at next doors dining table with roast beef slipping down his gullet, the daughter of the household giving him flirting glances, and the mother and father paying him a dozen or so patronizing comments. He found that he ate up these fools, along with their beef. That was thirty-six years ago.

The following night Johnson was the dinner guest of his other neighbor, a widower who treated him like a long lost son. Spouting wild fantastical stories from his long life, Johnson smiled whilst listening knowing they were all lies. He liked this man, he even considered taking up the widower’s offer of another dinner date, but the nuked faggots told him otherwise. Johnson tempted as he was could not fight off the curiosity that compelled him to the next household. By the end of the week Johnson had visited half of his street, he knew all their names and what he found fascinating was he already knew about the other half of the street. This had primarily been derived from number 8. A pair of sisters, that seemed to know him even before he had introduced himself. Throughout the long evening their mouths never stopped yapping. With their bodies moving in stop-motion they unleashed a steam of consistently cruel comments on the rest of their neighbors, such as ‘You know the gentleman at number six was caught inflagranti with the lady in the bungalow’s husband.’ ‘Did you see the slut across the road scream yesterday when the bailiffs came, mangy cow.’ and ’They buried that Madame at the top of the streets husband today, wouldn’t surprise me if she put him there.’ Throughout the night and during Johnson’s fake laughter, he found that he was ashamed at himself for making theses hags think they were right and for having looked with some disdain at his previous dinner dates. When Johnson did have dinner with the gentleman at number six he discovered that he had not been caught inflagranti, in fact the lady in the bungalow had invited him to join her and her husband in a ménage a trios; an offer he had accepted and continued to accept. Johnson also found out that the slut across the road was desperately trying to feed her three children on a ludicrously low supermarket wage, so far she was failing in this attempt. The Madame at the top of the street was not a wife but a daughter who cried herself to sleep every night and thanked Johnson for understanding. Two weeks had past since Johnson had eaten beef. There were only four unknowns left on his street, he realized he had an unstoppable urge to complete the set, to finish the puzzle, to find out who.

The four unknowns left Johnson hungry for more; they only seemed to repeat what he had already seen. Johnson surprised by the lack of surprise needed a new challenge; he needed something new to collect. His plan began its formulation when he was browsing through his father’s vast set of encyclopedias. He read of the explorers of the past, Polo, Livingston, Cook, Columbus. He read of their successes, their failures and adventures and realized their burning desire to discover had ignited within him. By the end of the next month he had eaten dinner at another 25 houses belonging to people he worked with. By the end of the following three months he knew a little more about everyone at the factory in which he was employed. He was now left in a quandary for several reasons. His first problem was keeping track of his work college’s addresses, they spanned several miles and Johnson found it hard to visualize his accomplishments. This was conquered by the purchase of a street map blown up to ridiculous proportions and pinned to his bedroom wall. Johnson then proceeded to delete the visited homes. Once this task was complete, Johnson saw how much work was ahead of him, he had only just begun, and what had been done looked pathetic. In that one blink of recognition Johnson felt alone. He needed more, and he was about to embark on his adventure, he was about to become the urban explorer.

In this moment of self-importance Johnson forgot his second problem, it was a problem he confronted inebriated. Johnson had always dined with people he knew, however little. He now faced the challenge of forcing a dinner invitation out of people he had never even greeted on the street. Johnson had several personalities a dreamer, a listener, a son, but the happy-go-lucky chatterbox was not one of them, he wasn’t everybody’s friend, in fact he was nobodies. He entered the bar a nervous wreck the confidence that had spurred him into visiting his street had vanished, leaving behind an empty shell. Johnson decided to fill himself with father’s choice of drink, straight whiskey. The initial shots burned his mouth but by the fourth Johnson’s nerves had been replaced by apprehension. Without commanding it Johnson found himself involved in a confrontation with a middle-aged drunk. Without commanding it Johnson found himself drinking from a indistinguishable bottle and swaying down dark alleyways listening to an out of tune rendition of some old song by the drunk he had befriended in the bar. Without commanding it Johnson found himself in a bare walled, unfurnished house fighting over the one solitary item in the unplugged fridge. Without commanding it the drunk and Johnson discovered the art of sharing and the fuzzy item was consumed. The next morning Johnson awoke bones aching and mind in standstill, the drunk still in slumber didn’t feel the notes being slipped into his jacket pocket, and without commanding it Johnson thanked him for making it so easy.

In the many years to come Johnson met many people like this man, desperate and lonely. He often considered letting them in on his mission, like some sort of guru he would give his gift to these fellow loners, but that would only create an entire town of drones visiting each other, only able to talk about who’d they’d visited the previous night; there would be nothing for him. These selfish hang-ups were contradicted by the fact that Johnson only ever entered these households for one night and never visited them again. That hurt Johnson, but he also liked it. He liked it like he liked the array of scars he collected on his left arm, adding to them when he had failed to find a dinner date; it was a collection he had cultivated since his parents demise. It was also a collection that increased after visiting number 3 Duke Street.

It was 1972, five years since he became the urban explorer. It was the first time in while that Johnson was in any way fashionable with his locks now hitting the back of his neck. He was buying groceries and twenty-two biros, so he looked reasonably exotic. Behind him at the counter was a middle-aged lady buying ten picture frames. Johnson had an empty slot that night and took her curious purchase as a cue to incite a dinner. By that evening they were eating fish and chips in her front room watching the news in silence. This was always the way when Johnson had a female companion for the night; he was getting better, but if there was no family or friends it was usually a struggle. 3 Duke Street had told Johnson that she collected photo frames, and she too sensed the tension and decided to relieve it by showing him her collection. It was a vast collection of frames, but that was it, only the frames. She told him that one day she would fill them with memories worth remembering; she was just waiting. Johnson knew she was of the same, the deep sadness of her collection echoed within him and they kissed a long kiss. No one spoke they just fell to the floor as one. After, they said nothing. Number 3 Duke Street just opened a small chest of draws pulled out a camera and took a photo of Johnson lying naked on the living room floor. ‘This will be the first one’, with that he left. He never saw her again.

With age came the end and as Johnson’s odyssey drew to a close so came sadness and depression, hitting its height 2 days ago. Johnson turned away from the window. He tried to think about number 14 Carson Close cleaning up sick but Duke Street kept bursting through. He was sixty-one and still she haunted him. Going back there two nights ago almost tore Johnson apart. He was due to have dinner at number 6 Duke Street, but had underestimated how walking past her window would make him think of all the wasted years, all the ifs and buts. If only he had had the guts to change and say…

Johnson decided to stop reminiscing and take his seventh shower of the day before going out to the last house left in town.

Number 13 Denton Street were a wonderful young couple that Johnson had bumped into at the chemist. After the pleasantries he realized that the husband was to be employed at Johnson’s last workplace, a job he had been retired from for two years. Johnson offered some kindly advice and was invited to dinner. Things proceeded smoothly but without incident, they ate and drank wine and as the evening drew to a close Johnson said his good-byes. It was then that he burst into uncontrollable tears. The couple slightly startled by this display of raw emotion was at a loss. Johnson wept for several more minutes until he managed to control himself. He said nothing, just downed the remainder of his drink and left the house leaving the door open. That night Johnson put the last pin in the map; he decided not to reminisce like yesterday, but instead take out every single pin one by one. It took him three hours. That night he slept on the floor using the perforated map as a quilt.

It was time to leave. It took Johnson three days to pack. A week earlier he had started getting cardboard boxes from the local supermarket and he used these to parcel up all his mum’s wardrobe, his dads watches, the nail clippings and the giant map. When everything was neatly stacked against the hallway wall waiting to go into storage Johnson stood back to admire his collection of collections. The next morning the removal van drove off up the street with decade’s worth of memories. Johnson went into the kitchen to have his last meal in the town, alone.

The cabby just would not stop honking his horn. Johnson anxious that the neighbors would complain rushed to leave. He quickly snatched his travel bag and opened the front door. Johnson recognized the driver immediately, he’d had dinner with him four years ago but he’d never seen him smile like this before. It was a huge beaming smile of joy - no wait a minute thought Johnson, he’s not alone. Looking around Johnson could see the street was full of hundreds of people. Johnson stepped out onto the drive and gazed around at the entire town. “We’re here to say goodbye,” yelled old Mr. Gleason from No 2 Herald Street, “and thank you for being a friend. Cue the band”.

Three trumpets blasted out the opening to a rousing soul song as the crowd parted and Johnson stepped amongst them. Above him he heard the hum of a zeppelin flying through the clouds with ‘Thank You Johnson’ written across its belly. Then Johnson saw her. Number 3 Duke Street; she hadn’t changed a bit. Once again they said nothing, Johnson just simply walked towards her and they embraced. The crowd went ballistic - but why was the cabby still honking his horn.

Johnson quickly snatched his travel bag and exited the front door. He didn’t recognize the cabby and no crowd was there to say goodbye, no soul band, no zeppelin and no number 3 Duke Street to kiss. Johnson got solemnly into the taxi.

“Where to mate?”

“The airport” replied Johnson.

The taxi pulled out of the street Johnson had spent all his life.

“Where you off to?” offered the driver in an attempt at conversation.

Johnson looked at the mirror in front of him, stared straight into the driver’s eyes and said “New York City, I’m moving there to start a new project. Don’t know if I’ll finish it.”