Slapshot 3 - Neighbourhood Watch

Polo tube falls apart and I have a pocket full of sugary holes intermingle-mixed with small coins and other bits of dreary debris. Rizla packet falls apart and clusters of sulphite lined paper wings flutter to the ground. Pen dries up and leaves nothing but scratchy marks. Lungs cough up phlegm and blood. Cups run dry. I sigh. It’s a dirty, dirty, fragile kind of day.

Some days begin with menace and then they end in shame. Some days play it the other way. I’m staring out my window at reflections in the rain. I watch the school pervert watch the kids at play. I watch the crossing lady wonder what to say; and the angry motorists held up on their way.  And in the stormy autumn day the pelican gently sways. It’s a dirty, dirty, fragile kind of day.

Then across the street a movement out of beat. Something unexpected, unusual, out of the ordinary, not normal, simply weird.

It starts with a single slate at number thirty eight, slipping from the roof. Brought down by the persistent rain. These houses are getting on for a hundred years old. Built to northern European weather expectations of the twentieth century.  Not to typical forty days of biblical torrents over and over and over again. A single slate , slip, slither sliding and tipping over the exaggerated drains bolted on in a futile attempt to adapt, evolve to change and yet to still remain the same. I watch it tumble towards the ground.

But then nothing. No fragile splintering shattering smash. For a moment I wonder, did it fall on grass. But then I remember, grass is a phenomena of a phenomenal past. The tile blinked, completely from existence. Looking to the roof I see a beautiful twinkling patchwork quilt of that that yet still is and that which never did exist. But this house is no empty shell.

The body count is six. Or would be if there would be bodies left to count. But that’s not the nature of The Blink. Pam and Dave. Siblings Britney, Courtney, Alex and gale. I scratch out the phonemes of their names with a pen with no ink, embossing the page of the ledger. An almost runic form intended to withstand the oblivion of The Blink. To preserve this once great civilization of man. Minus six, October eleven twenty eleven. Four million nine-hundred and thirty seven thousand  seven hundred and seventy five remain, worldwide.

The shadowless penumbra seeps outwards, leaving in its wake a hole in the memory of those who’d ever cared to look upon this place, and a rune in a book that may or may not survive. Until, I am the Cheshire Cat. But with a blank expression on my face. With no support to hold it there in its right and rightful time and place, as I too become a victim of The Blink. With no one who remembers me enough to scratch my name. I sigh. It’s a dirty, dirty, fragile kind of day.

Slapshot 2 - Empath

Shiv was glad to sit down. He’d been knotted up inside since the hold-up, not even the pleasure of Nico’s slap had unwound him. Normally he’d have revelled in that, but guns made him nervous. Now he slumped in an old upholstered grotesquery of a chair. He knew it was alive with bugs but the feel of a material weft pleased him.  He said he liked the organics of it. Others said the organics of it liked him. He absently picked an armoured scurrying thing from his forearm. He wondered what kind of creature ate this. Everything gets eaten.

Nico preferred the floor.

She shuckled her jacket from her slender frame and allowed it to languidly slip to her feet. Languid shuckling, one of the many benefits of engineered materials. Any girl can strip as though she had the grace and favour of Monroe. Not that Nico needs such gross tactics, she just likes the way the cloth folds itself neatly beneath her as she sits.

And as she sits she sighs. And as she sighs she weeps.

Shiv feels sick. Her tears do that to men, even him.  He doesn’t touch her.  If he did he would lose his mind in the labyrinths of grief she carries. She’s infectious like that. And the simplest things, like getting mugged with what was almost certainly an empty gun, would trigger her.  All of her days and all of her nights were spent subconsciously absorbing the petty hates, worries, fears and dreads of those around her. That’s why they don’t go out so very much. But today had been special.

Today is an anniversary. Shiv tries not to dwell on it for the fear that his mind will further poison that of his sister. They had set out atthe appointed time, as they did every year. Walking. Nobody with sense, or without a firearm, walked these days. But that was how it had always been, how they had always done it. A short walk up a steep hill to one of the few green patches left in a carbolic city of cut throats and chancers. To buy flowers and stand for a few empty moments. To take a refuge in the stillness of dead minds. The last gift a parent can give to one such as her. Sometimes cut stems do have healing powers.

This year they didn’t even make it there. With no money, no tribute, she wouldn’t go on. She wouldn’t take without giving, not even from the ten year old corpse of her father. Now she lay approaching a trauma state. Depression they used to say. But it is the old curse of the empath, in a city of 20 million dark thoughts.

Shiv puts out the light and takes his own screaming mind from the room. He can only be of help by being elsewhere.  But that’s this city’s life all over.

Slapshot 1 - Shabby

Jacket and trousers are both pinstripe but the one is quite dark and the other too light to ever have belonged to just the same suit. But what really disgusts is that tight covered drum of a hairy pot belly protruding above the totally tight expandable cloth of your waistline. Straining to constrain it your shirt spreads open between buttoneered buttons in a vertical series of leering slits. Revealing a web of purple veins on patches of ruined skin and a grey disappointing treasure trail of matted hairs with sweat baked in.
The shirt is a blue and white checked cheesecloth, the kind I'd donate rather than buy from a charity shop.

But then you've got at the very least, the shiniest shoes upon your feet. I guess you notice those too readily, what with that used up middle aged man's stoop. Your eyes they are bright and your nose it is wet. So although you are altogether undeniably shabby, there's a flickering in you that betrays a sense of humanity. Just some muted subtle clues. As though you were born human.

That camera over your shoulder looks as though it has been through a war.
Top of the range but now like you battered and abused. The rubberised casing has peeled away leaving a webbing of gum that has since picked up layers of grime and dirt and the squashed bodies of occasional bugs. A sign that you work hard, or that you squeeze every  drop of life out of the the things that are around you? And of course, your phone is an android. Machines serving purpose. Not bestowed with the love of an enthusiast. Rather, rigorously daily put through their paces. Sunglasses perched atop of your head. Nesting in the thinnest part of a once magnificent mane. Expecting to be on street corners most of the day earning your bread. I'll wager paparazzo.

At Oxford Circus we all squeeze off, a fleshly mass as one with each struggling bumping jostling to break free and take flight up the stairs. But you're more toad than sparrow. Lumbering along, one of your own wide thighs knocks the cap of your camera lens off and it clatters all of the way back down the stairs. I see you weigh up it's relative worth versus the effort of trudging after it against the tide. You're about to turn your considerable bulk when some fey young boy picks it up and passes it back. You take it in awkward stubby fingers and as hand brushes hand a spark of memory ignites.
Of a young a fiercely hopeful man determine to carve out a space and a name for himself. Of a time when you still had ideals and belief.  With mean piggy eyes betraying the shock you extrude something close to a smile. "Nice camera", the kid says.