Broken neon arabesque
I’m in confines of my own fucking creation. Can’t get out. Not even sure that I want to. Is it wrong that I want to prove the flaws in myself? Buff them up until they shine like some twisted diamond with a rotten worm in the centre. You can never get rid of it. Millions have tried. A Japanese team were given 10 billion for the task, used lasers, held the diamond still between a robotic finger and thumb. A week of work and then diamond shards spread across the gleaming laboratory floor…they will fill the rings of a hundred wives soon to become divorcées. From biggest diamond in the world to pawn shop fodder…and the worm’s still there…it sits taunting them on the cold lab table, greener and even more rotten now it’s out in the open air, small and shriveled and emitting fetid waves of stink. They could never get rid of it. You can’t destroy the soul.
Fall into the arms of one, run from them when they can’t see. How can they not know that ‘I’m fine.” is the cry of the howling madman screaming and crying in the rain? Yes, I’m alone because I want to be…until silence builds to an endless buzzing inside my head and eyes roll about with no fixed purpose. A hostage in my own fucking flat. The knocks come at first…well meaning taps against wood. But they die off in the end, interest can only last for so long, a bitter confirmation that I was right. I was but a walk on part in their play…they might mourn my company for a while, buy a drink to my health (because anything and everything can be used as an excuse for a drink, from anniversaries of fourteenth cousins twice removed to the death of your fucking bastard of a boss’s pet hamster….long as said bastard of a boss is paying for that one) but after no time at all they will pick themselves up, go merrily about their way and forget that I ever existed. But perhaps I’m wrong, maybe something has happened to the outside world, maybe war has come to London town, hysteria moved from the tabloids to the streets, resplendent in all its violent glory. The time is right for some catastrophe after all, apathy is a disease in these times, one that has gripped hold of almost everyone, symptomised by blank gazes, zombies with white strands dangling from their ears, tremouring hands clicking a beat against the glass of bus windows. Paranoia spreads. Don’t talk to the person beside you…you never know who they might be.
I’ve lost track of the days, decided at the beginning of my self imposed quarantine that I would survive as a Renton for however long it took, went to the shop and stocked up on soup, ice cream…although the drug related items were ditched in favour of five bottles of Ireland's finest. It seemed fitting at the time. After all, I am attempting a cold turkey of sorts, hoping isolation will sweat the evil out from inside. I threw the clock against the wall on the third day, and natural light doesn’t penetrate down to the depths of this desolate basement flat. My only reminder that time has passed is the slowly shrinking pyramid of soup tins on the floor. I shaved five tins ago, washed my hair eight tins ago, last felt the cold embrace of a blade against my skin not long after my last meal. It had been tomato soup. I appreciated the inherent humour.
Sirens sound outside. Some poor bastard being chased by the pigs. I imagine his fear and terror, perhaps even his exhilaration, as I close my eyes, lying on the floor with its thick green carpets spotted with old stubborn stains…beer, whisky, blood, vomit. I could be dead, the polar opposite to whoever it is running for his life out on the street. Running from the cops…in that moment you are the most alive you ever will be. Perhaps there are other experiences that come close…the moment in sex where everything is all right with the world, before the guilt sets in as you have reached this place through the use of an empty vessel, someone that you wouldn’t chat to for more than a minute if given the choice but who is somehow good enough to screw. Or perhaps the first high from a drug…although after that first hit the next is always a disappointment, until you are reaching for the needle not in search of the next high, but in a desperate grasp to just attain that level of normality that had been the status quo before.
The sirens have stopped now. Perhaps they’ve caught him? Or maybe the chase has taken to the street, hearts beating against chests, feet beating against the pavement. African athletes running for fun and their own pride might shame us at every Olympics in the foreseeable future, but I wager that London’s underbelly could provide a score of rogues able to outrun them in an instant if they could feel the hot breath of the fuzz on their neck. My fingers close around the neck of my second last bottle of whisky, and I drink the amber liquid slowly, savouring every minute burn of the alcohol as it travels down my throat. The last bottle has been hidden from view, because if the whisky is finished then it’s all over. I can live on sodding soup for as long as you like, until all my teeth fall out and I no longer even remember any tastes other than tomato and mushroom, but without the numbing refuge of alcohol I’ll be out of this room in a shot, I know it. Similar reasoning lies behind the fucking massive stash of fags, one of those huge cases you get in the duty free sections in airports, which I’m also nearing the end of. Thought it would last longer, but nothing last very long when you are alone in a room with nothing to do. Watching the smoke becomes a pastime in itself, lying back and staring at the ceiling where it gathers and swirls around, unable to escape. It would have set off the fire alarm by now, if I hadn’t taken the battery out of it months ago to replace the one in my guitar tuner.
But what the fucking hell is that? Footsteps in the flat upstairs? Those old bastards had moved on years ago….one to Devon and the other to the grave. Maybe squatters again, they turn up every couple of months, usually remain there for a while having parties and generally living their lives until I threaten to call the police on them and they move on. Only after I’ve indulged in their drugs and booze though….call it a kind of rent. Not that I pay any kind of rent on this place myself, and I haven’t had a working phone in here for donkey’s years, but what they don’t know can’t hurt them, eh? And I’ve been here for long enough to have a kind of right to the place by now, become ingrained in the cold unwelcoming walls, the small grate in the main room that has never housed a fire in the time I’ve been here, but holds the remains of some charred snatches of paper so someone, sometime has obviously used it, if only for getting rid of some unwanted evidence. That is the only identity of the blackened remains that makes sense in my head, it couldn’t be the ashes of some kids letter to Santa for example….these walls could never house joy. Or perhaps I have just infected the place? Was it like this before?
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
That’s my door. I would be enraged at someone knocking at this time, but it could be one in the afternoon for all I know. Not fucking answering it though…. doesn’t matter if it’s Lou Reed with a crate of Jamesons under one arm, he can go fuck himself for all I care, I’m not opening that door for anyone. The knocks are getting more frantic now, whoever it is obviously losing patience, and I get to my feet, wrapping my thin woolen blanket round my shoulders to stave off the cold, ready to go and yell through the door for whoever it is to just piss off.
Thud-THUD-Crash..
I can do nothing but watch as the door opens, not from the side as it’s supposed to, but crashing down from the top and kind of falling in a graceless motion, the bottom hinge still remaining and skewing its trajectory so that it doesn’t fall far from the frame but instead hangs there, letting me see wide panicked eyes staring through the gap at me, a face from a nightmare world, bones seemingly on the verge of cutting through grey, pallid skin, sunken cheeks, and hair all standing on end, as if the individual strands were trying to escape being bound to this desperate stranger.
“Lemme in! The fucking coppers are after me. ”
The words stink of desperation, those big black eyes at once reviling me and drawing me in. I knew what his problem was….he was a junky….it was obvious from his appearance, the look of a soul inhabiting inside a deceased body, the way dirty fingers trembled at the gap between door and frame, not scrambling for entrance but just moving for no reason. I smile at him, feeling the cruel twist of my lips, and he looks relieved, like I’m actually going to let him in, not just laugh in his face as he’s dragged screaming away by the police. He would be a screamer too, I’m sure of it…can see it in the innocence that still lurks behind the horror and darkness in those eyes. I place my fingers around the key….savouring the building hope outlined on his face. I slowly swivel my hand, thin scrape of metal upon metal, draw it out until the point……My eyes widen as I hear a ‘click’ of the bolt snapping away….too far, too far! The shadow of a man on the other side of the door has slid through the smallest crack before I can flick the bolt back, and he presses his back against the door, pushing my stunned hand off the key and flicking it round with a relieved sigh. He smiles, teeth stretching tight skin in a grimace of a smile.
“Home sweet home…”
Fall into the arms of one, run from them when they can’t see. How can they not know that ‘I’m fine.” is the cry of the howling madman screaming and crying in the rain? Yes, I’m alone because I want to be…until silence builds to an endless buzzing inside my head and eyes roll about with no fixed purpose. A hostage in my own fucking flat. The knocks come at first…well meaning taps against wood. But they die off in the end, interest can only last for so long, a bitter confirmation that I was right. I was but a walk on part in their play…they might mourn my company for a while, buy a drink to my health (because anything and everything can be used as an excuse for a drink, from anniversaries of fourteenth cousins twice removed to the death of your fucking bastard of a boss’s pet hamster….long as said bastard of a boss is paying for that one) but after no time at all they will pick themselves up, go merrily about their way and forget that I ever existed. But perhaps I’m wrong, maybe something has happened to the outside world, maybe war has come to London town, hysteria moved from the tabloids to the streets, resplendent in all its violent glory. The time is right for some catastrophe after all, apathy is a disease in these times, one that has gripped hold of almost everyone, symptomised by blank gazes, zombies with white strands dangling from their ears, tremouring hands clicking a beat against the glass of bus windows. Paranoia spreads. Don’t talk to the person beside you…you never know who they might be.
I’ve lost track of the days, decided at the beginning of my self imposed quarantine that I would survive as a Renton for however long it took, went to the shop and stocked up on soup, ice cream…although the drug related items were ditched in favour of five bottles of Ireland's finest. It seemed fitting at the time. After all, I am attempting a cold turkey of sorts, hoping isolation will sweat the evil out from inside. I threw the clock against the wall on the third day, and natural light doesn’t penetrate down to the depths of this desolate basement flat. My only reminder that time has passed is the slowly shrinking pyramid of soup tins on the floor. I shaved five tins ago, washed my hair eight tins ago, last felt the cold embrace of a blade against my skin not long after my last meal. It had been tomato soup. I appreciated the inherent humour.
Sirens sound outside. Some poor bastard being chased by the pigs. I imagine his fear and terror, perhaps even his exhilaration, as I close my eyes, lying on the floor with its thick green carpets spotted with old stubborn stains…beer, whisky, blood, vomit. I could be dead, the polar opposite to whoever it is running for his life out on the street. Running from the cops…in that moment you are the most alive you ever will be. Perhaps there are other experiences that come close…the moment in sex where everything is all right with the world, before the guilt sets in as you have reached this place through the use of an empty vessel, someone that you wouldn’t chat to for more than a minute if given the choice but who is somehow good enough to screw. Or perhaps the first high from a drug…although after that first hit the next is always a disappointment, until you are reaching for the needle not in search of the next high, but in a desperate grasp to just attain that level of normality that had been the status quo before.
The sirens have stopped now. Perhaps they’ve caught him? Or maybe the chase has taken to the street, hearts beating against chests, feet beating against the pavement. African athletes running for fun and their own pride might shame us at every Olympics in the foreseeable future, but I wager that London’s underbelly could provide a score of rogues able to outrun them in an instant if they could feel the hot breath of the fuzz on their neck. My fingers close around the neck of my second last bottle of whisky, and I drink the amber liquid slowly, savouring every minute burn of the alcohol as it travels down my throat. The last bottle has been hidden from view, because if the whisky is finished then it’s all over. I can live on sodding soup for as long as you like, until all my teeth fall out and I no longer even remember any tastes other than tomato and mushroom, but without the numbing refuge of alcohol I’ll be out of this room in a shot, I know it. Similar reasoning lies behind the fucking massive stash of fags, one of those huge cases you get in the duty free sections in airports, which I’m also nearing the end of. Thought it would last longer, but nothing last very long when you are alone in a room with nothing to do. Watching the smoke becomes a pastime in itself, lying back and staring at the ceiling where it gathers and swirls around, unable to escape. It would have set off the fire alarm by now, if I hadn’t taken the battery out of it months ago to replace the one in my guitar tuner.
But what the fucking hell is that? Footsteps in the flat upstairs? Those old bastards had moved on years ago….one to Devon and the other to the grave. Maybe squatters again, they turn up every couple of months, usually remain there for a while having parties and generally living their lives until I threaten to call the police on them and they move on. Only after I’ve indulged in their drugs and booze though….call it a kind of rent. Not that I pay any kind of rent on this place myself, and I haven’t had a working phone in here for donkey’s years, but what they don’t know can’t hurt them, eh? And I’ve been here for long enough to have a kind of right to the place by now, become ingrained in the cold unwelcoming walls, the small grate in the main room that has never housed a fire in the time I’ve been here, but holds the remains of some charred snatches of paper so someone, sometime has obviously used it, if only for getting rid of some unwanted evidence. That is the only identity of the blackened remains that makes sense in my head, it couldn’t be the ashes of some kids letter to Santa for example….these walls could never house joy. Or perhaps I have just infected the place? Was it like this before?
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
That’s my door. I would be enraged at someone knocking at this time, but it could be one in the afternoon for all I know. Not fucking answering it though…. doesn’t matter if it’s Lou Reed with a crate of Jamesons under one arm, he can go fuck himself for all I care, I’m not opening that door for anyone. The knocks are getting more frantic now, whoever it is obviously losing patience, and I get to my feet, wrapping my thin woolen blanket round my shoulders to stave off the cold, ready to go and yell through the door for whoever it is to just piss off.
Thud-THUD-Crash..
I can do nothing but watch as the door opens, not from the side as it’s supposed to, but crashing down from the top and kind of falling in a graceless motion, the bottom hinge still remaining and skewing its trajectory so that it doesn’t fall far from the frame but instead hangs there, letting me see wide panicked eyes staring through the gap at me, a face from a nightmare world, bones seemingly on the verge of cutting through grey, pallid skin, sunken cheeks, and hair all standing on end, as if the individual strands were trying to escape being bound to this desperate stranger.
“Lemme in! The fucking coppers are after me. ”
The words stink of desperation, those big black eyes at once reviling me and drawing me in. I knew what his problem was….he was a junky….it was obvious from his appearance, the look of a soul inhabiting inside a deceased body, the way dirty fingers trembled at the gap between door and frame, not scrambling for entrance but just moving for no reason. I smile at him, feeling the cruel twist of my lips, and he looks relieved, like I’m actually going to let him in, not just laugh in his face as he’s dragged screaming away by the police. He would be a screamer too, I’m sure of it…can see it in the innocence that still lurks behind the horror and darkness in those eyes. I place my fingers around the key….savouring the building hope outlined on his face. I slowly swivel my hand, thin scrape of metal upon metal, draw it out until the point……My eyes widen as I hear a ‘click’ of the bolt snapping away….too far, too far! The shadow of a man on the other side of the door has slid through the smallest crack before I can flick the bolt back, and he presses his back against the door, pushing my stunned hand off the key and flicking it round with a relieved sigh. He smiles, teeth stretching tight skin in a grimace of a smile.
“Home sweet home…”