Police Line-Up

The sun shone oppressive on the filthy gilt streets, gold specked with dirt and spit. The thick smog scrawled into the basin from Hollywood Hill, and all was a white noise of engines purring over, horns rumbling, and sirens wailing like disembodied voices amongst a sea of black and Latino faces.

He approached the building, its thousand glass eyes staring out; its brilliant exterior hiding a deep and shady belly full of frosted glass, beaten brows, and blackguardly exchanges. He entered, signed in, and was taken up.

He limped into the room, his legs pained and bruised, and was met by the officer, whose black uniform seemed starched onto his body. The cop looked him over sneeringly, but the man did not acknowledge the hateful face - stuck on his neck like a flabby stony totem glaring out at him.

Another came in and stood by the door, taking off his peaked cap to fan himself. ‘You ready, son?’ asked the first officer, peering out from the emptiness behind his hard face.

‘Yeah,’ he murmured.

‘Sorry, son?’ the cop repeated.

‘Yes, Sir,' said the man, then he looked down in pity.  

He saw the sound recorder’s red light in the darkness, blinking steadily. He felt weak, felt an aching in his ribs – so sensitive since that night.

            ‘Right, send ‘em in,’ said the first officer, and in they came - all five of them. They stopped in their appropriate positions, faced the glass, and one of them – the one who’d beat him - stared knowingly at the window, seeming to pierce through into his being, two blue shards shining from his face.

‘Right, when you’re ready,’ the second cop said. He put his hand on the man's shoulder: ‘I trust you’ll do the right thing.’

The man went to speak, but the words were stuck in his throat. ‘Which one?’ he asked. ‘Which one did it, goddammit!’ He smiled at him, crushing him with the weight of his knowing. The man could see the word nigger curled up in the corner of his mouth, unspoken. They had him in their palm; they offered their fists.

Note: my thanks to Thomas Jordan for his insight and suggestions.

And He Resigned Himself

This is the story of Harry Webber. Did you ever hear the story about the deaf chicken that crossed the road and was sent up in a flurry of blood and feathers? Poor little thing. Well, Harry was that chicken.

            And the operative word here is was. I knew him a fair few years, and I’m surprised he lasted ‘til thirty-two, to be honest. You see, Harry was a man of impeccable moral uprightness – but also of impeccable logic.

            Harry was a vegetarian from the age of twenty onwards. He’d make soups, vegetarian paella, seafood salads, baked salmon, Spanish omelettes – but every now and again, he’d go home and his old mum would give him a big bag of goodies, and in this bag of goodies he’d find sausages, bacon... you see, if he were given animal flesh he wouldn’t let it go to waste; waste was a bigger evil than carnivorous extravagance, he thought. So, when he’d go to dinner parties, if he hadn’t asked for a vegetarian option, he’d eat what was given him on the plate.

            Harry also loved hemp – what an amazingly productive material! Strong, it could be made into clothing, furniture, recyclable plastics – it was crucial in 16^th century ship-building. Only, he didn’t own any hemp clothing – his family would always buy him clothing from Debenhams, Next, George: all clothing made mostly from nylon, all clothing that used fossil fuels in their production. But never mind – maybe one day he’d meet some vegetarian friends, people who, unlike his family, cared enough to buy him such things as hemp. And he could return the favour – oh, what glorious days! The salad days, the salad days would finally come – and after the meat days!

            But no; he waited, and waited, and waited, but no one came; maybe they were all at dinner parties or at home, resigned to the fact that unfaulting logic would always get in the way of their aspirations.

            Harry was a keen supporter of renewable energy – energy for the here and now: tidal, wind, geothermal; he’d even heard of gyms in which the equipment powered everything or clubs in which the kinetic energy of dancing would be transferred to electrical energy and power the lights and equipment – and just wait for fusion! Give it ten or twenty years... but that was too far ahead and the technology was too uncertain. He’d learnt all of this in an evening class.

            Despite this, however, Harry resigned himself to nuclear and coal-fired energy: nuclear was good enough, wasn’t it? And it was safe – enough. And coal? Well, the public didn’t care – stations were running down in England, anyway – but China, on the other hand.... What could be done? It was out of his hands. So he’d champion tidal and other innovative forms of renewable energy, but his heart lacked the passion of resistance.

            At the age of thirty-two, Harry killed himself – but it was quite accidental. You see, after one dinner party talking about the sanctity of life, how no life form is qualitatively better than any other, he cooked some underprepared chicken and contracted E. coli. Despite all he knew about microbial biology and the dangers of certain bacteria, he never consulted a doctor. His case became serious, and by the time his family got him admitted it was too late – he was dead within two weeks. I heard through the grapevine they comforted him, brought him grapes, fruit juice, fresh carnations, and his mother brought him a plate of sausage rolls – which he ate.

            And so, on March 23^rd 2011, at the cage of thirty-two, Harry Connick Samuel Webber died from immune-deficiency complications. And who are you? I hear you ask. Well, it doesn’t matter who I am. This is Harry’s story, and I am just an old friend. But there is one final twist to the story: I found a diary the day after his death when clearing out his apartment, and I started reading it. The things I’ve relayed are based on his thoughts and musings. Halfway through the diary, I read of his wishes to be buried in a wicker casket when he toddled off life’s short plank, and I saw to it that his family was informed.

            I read all of this in his diary – in his leather diary that his mother bought him for his twenty-fifth birthday. Harry was too young to go, and the world was far too much for him to fathom. Like two diametrically opposed dishes piled onto the same plate, steak and kidney pie served with a mozzarella and basil salad, he came into the world, and in the same fashion he left, resigning himself to the obscurity of life’s palette, and the deafening logic of propriety.

Charlie

My name is Charlie, and I am ten years old. I tear over the field and trot through the long grass, whisking my head about me in searching for my master. The beings around me think I’m cute because my face is soppy, I wear this soppy expression – it hangs from my cheeks in bunches of jowls, black, furry. To them, I smile and I frown, I sense sadness. And I can sense sadness. Sometimes, I sit completely still in front of one of them, the one with the long hair and the glasses who wears this hanging thing that covers the things she supports herself with, and I look up into the round glassy things in the thing on top of this being, and I swear I can see all the sadness of the world in them, even though I don’t quite know what sadness is. And this being’s glassy orbs go weak and watery in return. So I nestle my head down there on her lap, and she pats my head, and I breathe deeply and calmly, my tongue hanging out slightly as I pant.

          Sometimes, I wee up on these huge things. My god, they’re huge – I can’t tell the colours, mind, but they’re huge! I get so excited when I see them – but I don’t let my masters know. Some of them are so tall that I can only see them when I sit on my haunches and look up. And after I’ve cocked my leg and done my thing, I can smell it, and it smells so strong and sweet! And I can smell the wetness of the other ones, too – I gotta make sure I cover up over them. I don’t know why – god knows I ain’t got no place to call my own. But I do it anyhow. And these other ones, they remind me of myself. And I don’t know why they do – I’ve never seen myself, and god knows I wouldn’t recognise myself if I did. God. God. God... I wonder what that word means. I’ve heard the bigger ones say it, usually when they’re shouting. I think it must mean something pretty bad.

          When I was a puppy, I was the cutest thing. I was little and black and cuddly; my skin not quite tight enough on my body, my ears not quite right – they hung from my head like slack sails to the wind, wobbling about like they had a joyous life of their own. And I used to play all the time. I couldn’t run very well, mind, but I’d toddle hither and thither, chasing things, fetching things – always excitedly, with an abundance of life and vigour. But now my joints are beginning to stiffen up a bit – I can’t run quite as well as I used to. I don’t chase cats or birds anymore; I only run when I have to. I don’t know what’s happening to me. It feels like I’m running down, and running down. Maybe I’ll become a puppy again! I don’t know – I ain’t quite got the word for it.

          My owners are calling me now. I’d better go. I can hear the clink-clink of food falling into the thing they put my food in, and I can hear the running of water. I’ll eat that, then I’ll go lie on my bed and rest for a bit, I think. I’ve still got life in my bones yet, mind: I don’t rest all the time. Now, where did I leave my bone? Maybe I am getting old, after all.

Smoky Bacon

I am the arm of the state and everything that it stands for; I'm the knuckles on the fist of big business, and the coins in the velvet pocket of private property. I prevent civil disobedience by inciting civil disobedience. And so what? I would’ve hit Ian Tomlinson, too. I would’ve beaten Rodney King Jr. Hell, if I were on the LAPD payroll I’d be openly racist!

          I have an estranged and angry son. Why can’t he walk through the red mist like I did? God knows I was angry, too. Well, they call me Billy the Club, Big Bill, Dutch, Irish... William FitzPatrick’s the name, and I wear my badge like a clown wears his sunflower.

          I’ve been on the force for thirty-one years; in thirteen weeks I get my retirement: a big party: men in circles, pints cocked, quiche or pie in hand, laughing at this or that. It’s gonna be great. A life in the service, in service. What a load of fishguts!

          I walk proud, this uniform like a suit of armour, my boots leading me, my taser and gun holstered, Billy Boy hanging down at my side. My gig is government; I’m here to protect, to serve, and to infringe on your civil liberties. And, God, don’t I know it!

          Yup, life is sweet. But last night, the funniest thing... I was burnt alive when my oven exploded, the gasline had cracked. The house went up like a tinderbox and I choked to death. Wife long gone, no piece of ass by my side, I died alone. God knows, I must’ve chosen the wrong service....

The Seaman

I don’t belong here, thought the man. I belong at sea. I want to smell of rust! I want hard, olive skin. I want my hair to be salty and coarse. I want to bathe: I want to smear myself with the sea.

            He walked through the crowded street. Lanes of people slipshod like a highway system gone haywire, jostling and jostled, walking like ghosts beneath the oppressive orb above. Look at my shirt, he thought. Just look at it: it’s yeller – the armpits are like ochre, it’s filthy, the waistline’s dirty... it’s glorious!

            And he could picture himself lonely and proud in a 6-foot tin can, rolling out to the deep blue to catch some sea trout – maybe even a marlin. He smiled and smacked his lips.

            The sea was eight miles away. He had no money. Besides, where would it take him? Where would it get him? It only opened up into a crowded and forsaken channel, overrun with trawlers and supertankers. No man could live in peace. He’d have a little cabin somewhere on a golden stretch of sand, small enough for an unappointed king, peaceful enough for a vagrant god.

            But no, he’d never stop. Once he was in that tin can, he’d let it roll on and on, he’d brave the storm, ride the waves, sleep under the stars, die majestically. And he’d never be cold. Never, he muttered, and his eyes trembled. And he sat on a bench in a small square of park under the shade of a beech tree and dreamed, trying to hold onto the gold of the sand and the endless blue of his dreams; the endless faraway blue that shimmered like a guiding star, the endless blue which he could never finally allow himself to hold.

As the Spirit Wanes, the Form Appears

I know a guy named Tom, and everything he says screams, ‘I’m wonderful! I’m wonderful! I’m wonderful! Look at me!’ But I know something he doesn’t, see: there’s a little bluebird in my pocket, and once it whispered to me: ‘as the spirit wanes, the form appears’.

            You can spend your whole life chasing after pipe-dreams, scattering seeds, throwing witticism to the wind, but ultimately you’ll wind down to a hollow note. You need spirit, see; you need persistence. When you give in to fame, fortune, renown, you lose your integrity completely; that seed inside you that grew flesh, that swelled and warmed and became blood-filled and ripe, it’ll wither away.

            They want your voice, your secrets. They only want it because they don’t possess it themselves. In a world growing crazier by the day, inventing new ways of talking to itself, pretending it has any relevance, any place, any position, any future, you’ve got to live wisely – and not on tenterhooks. You’ve gotta take life by the balls and throttle it, take no shit.

            This guy, Tom, he screams because he’s full of air, and if he doesn’t let it out he’ll explode. But that screaming will one day wind down to a sad wheeze – a sad wheeze that he’ll exhale pitifully, with furrowed brow, wondering where all the power went. It went out of his sleeve and down into the drain, day by day, piece by piece, and he never noticed.

            When you’re all noise, when you never care for truth or validity of opinion, what is real becomes blurred: you pronounce on everything, knowing you know nothing. You give because you feel part of the thing, but really you’re just a poor schmuck and the least you deserve is a kick up the arse. What has become of this world? Proud, ignorant people walking around, out of tune with themselves, out of tune with each other, out of tune with the inner logic of life, with the preciousness of life, with the way things ought to be.

            As the spirit wanes, the form appears. The little bluebird whispers this to me every night as it watches over me. I found him within a dead man’s heart, a dead man who pretended the blue bird was dead but knew it to be alive – he got it out of a night, talked to it, kissed it, told it he still knew it was there, and then put it back into that hot space, poured whiskey on it, enveloped it in cigarette smoke until its wings were tarred and burned. But I have him now, and I’ll never live down what he told me: when you give up on something - when you lose heart - shape takes form, and the words are put into your mouth, and you’re as good as dead.

Crawling

‘The ants are back again,’ said John through his large beard. Those bastards! I’d love to get them out in the open – then they’d let us alone!

            ‘Relax, John,’ said Angela. ‘They’re only ants!’

            Only ants, thought John. Red ants, thought John – the worst kind. He felt a burning in his soul, a fire in his conscience, the gnawing of a thousand tiny jaws – the pang he quickly dismissed.

            ‘Get some Bugzapper out the cupboard, and then fill in the hole,’ Angie called out.

            I know that, thought John. ‘Okay, honey.’ But they always come back, he thought. He looked at himself in the mirror – he was old, greying, his hair was only now streaked with a small sliver of black. He was wearing a black sweater, slacks, and open-toed sandals. John stood a fatigued and shaggy mock-joke of his youth.

            ‘He got the Bugzapper (a nasty-smelling concoction that meant whatever offending room had to be closed off) and some high-strength bleach out from the cupboard under the stairs. He went back into the kitchen, knelt down by the back door, and sprayed the ants. They were manic in the stinging foam, their antennae twitching and burning under the action of the abusive chemicals. He sprayed down the hole, too: that would keep the buggers from coming back, he thought.

            John left the kitchen and went into the living room. He would come back later to sweep up their small, dried bodies. He sat and watched television with Angie. They shared a bag of corn snacks. Then they went up to bed, and before they made love, Angie read a chapter of the novel she had on the go.

            John slept more uneasily than usual. He occasionally swatted his neck in his sleep, heard a steady, seamless, eternal crawling sound; then he heard a low buzz – a plane engine – and heard the sound of rushing flames, crackling wood, screaming women. He could see a dead elephant in a tortured clearing, and he could smell the burnt flesh of something else. And then he woke up with a violent turn. He went to the kitchen for a glass of orange, heard a familiar sound, but he dismissed it. John went back up to bed.

Angie was restless as he lay down to face the other way. He turned over, snuggling up behind her and pushing himself into the backs of her knees. He held onto her tightly. John closed his eyes to usher in sleep. Please come, he thought.

            The next day, he and Angie went to work. John worked in a bookshop; she worked in a grocery. They didn’t earn much, but they earned enough to pay the bills and put food in their mouths. The shop John worked in was big and full of old books – there were three floors; a strange shop, he’d always thought – but a lovely one because of this. He worked for a friend – he’d work there four days a week, usually, sitting behind the desk out front, sipping his black coffee, one sugar, and perusing the books at his leisure. Business was good – the local university had a prestigious English department – actually, it was reasonable more than anything else; the students appreciated a flow of good, affordable books – the more worn the better. Then he got the regulars in – Mr McCaffery, Stephen Blanche, Michael Dubois, Martin Oliver (otherwise known as Big Martin), Elizabeth Prigg, Mary Parker (who he swore was a bull dyke), and others.

            John closed up at six that afternoon and it was getting dark outside. He got the bus home and got in shortly after half past. When he got in, he found a note in the kitchen: Gone ‘round Susan’s. Be back late. Love you, hun. P.S. Dinner’s in the fridge. He scrunched up the note and threw it in the bin, then went to the fridge and found steak, potatoes, and string beans with gravy – he’d always tried to give up meat, but he liked the taste and the texture – especially of beef. Besides, it was not a big deal – he’d seen his fair share of blood.

            John ate it whilst watching the box. He couldn’t really concentrate, though, so he turned it off. He decided to run himself a bath and try to read something short and manageable – perhaps some short stories, beat, sci-fi – or maybe the Russians, those great visionaries. The warm water felt good – the steam went to his head. The window was closed and he felt relaxed but exhausted. He shut out all thought from his mind, submerging himself in the water; he did not open the book that lay beside the bath in the bundle of towels.

            After the bath, he went downstairs for some pudding and some orange. He flicked on the light and held the carton up to his mouth. And then he noticed something in the corner of the kitchen: the hole he’d sprayed the day before seemed bigger. He went over to it, put his finger in it, and felt the hard wood floorboard crumble at the touch of his fingers. He suddenly became scared: he put his ear to the floor. The sound was back: a steady crawling. As he listened, it seemed to grow louder and louder, closer and closer, until he imagined the whole house should be shaking. The floor under his feet started to crack and buckle, and with a terrible sound half the kitchen descended into a great hole in the earth. He rummaged around in the damp hole and then looked up – he could see the kitchen lights above his head, metres up.

            John could feel something crawling over his skin – he lifted his arm up to the light above him: thousands of ants, biting at his flesh! He desperately brushed them off, and then something from the other end of the hollow made his flesh crawl with chill fear: a scuttling sound was building and coming towards him. In the faint light, he saw two massive hairy red legs emerge, followed by a pair of barbed jaws. The ants were all over him. ‘Sorry!’ he cried. ‘I’m sorry!’ But it was too late for that. Buried beneath a mound of twitching red fury, the last thing he heard was the snapping of jaws and the stripping away of his flesh.

            When Angie returned home later that night, she found the house in darkness except for their bedroom and the kitchen. She searched upstairs and found the bed ruffled, the television playing to no-one – just footage from the Persian Gulf. She called out to John, but his familiar friendly, gravelly voice did not respond. She went downstairs and walked towards the kitchen, the lights flickering ominously. As she entered, she saw cracks up the wall, shattered crockery – then she saw a puddle of orange embedded with fragments of glass. As she approached, she saw that the kitchen surfaces were slanted and buckled like cardboard: a hole the size of a Jeep had engulfed half the kitchen. She screamed, shouting down into the abyss for John. She rushed into the lounge and phoned the police. She just said, ‘Come! Come quickly! For God’s sake just come! 27 Parson’s Road! It’s my husband – my husband!’ The police searched, and a health and safety crew came from the council. John was not found in the hollow, but they did report a strange network of tunnels, the likes and size of which they had never before seen.

            The following week, an old friend of John had rung Angie with condolences. She thought he had an odd reticence about him, a fear that was almost palpable across the line. He said he'd called after reading a disturbing article in the local paper about John's disappearance:

Wednesday, May 17th, 1992

John Patmore, Vietnam veteran and respected member of the local community, mysteriously disappeared Monday evening. He was last seen at his place of work - Bohemian Books - that afternoon. A strange hollow, which has been put down to subsidence by the city council, was found beneath his house on Monday evening. However, no body was found. His grieving wife, Angela, has expressed that if anyone knows of his whereabouts, or has any vital information, please.... The man could not read on and threw the paper down, terrified. He had a creeping fear that that something was now coming for him, hungry, marching in unison; the champing of their jaws the military drums; the underground caverns their chambers of blood: lifting one’s foot to quash them only made them bolder. The days of the bully were coming to an end, and all those with even the tiniest flecks of blood on their hands would be irrevocably consumed.