The City of This

by Alex Boast

  Padding down the stairs felt very much like lowering myself into a burning swimming pool, and each step took a bigger toll on my dwindling energy levels. I thought quickly of the stale ham sandwich, gathering dust on the sill.

  I could hear a faint tapping at my attic window, fading away as I entered the roasting silence of the lower floor.

  This time I didn't cry out: I screamed.

  Placed in a neat order of increasing size along the left side of the hallway, in-front of the heavy and dark door, a series of muddy little shoes. Six pairs in total.

  Each of them missing a lace.

  The overbearing silence and anxiety in the hallway is assaulted by a loud smash from above, and I tear my eyes from the little nightmares and run back up the carpeted stairs, dry mouth and all.

  I pause in the doorway of my room as his dark eyes meet mine.

  The Jackdaw, much larger now, had broken straight through the glass with his black, jagged beak, leaving feathers and tar-like blood all over the sill.

  As he opened his mouth and laughed a frighteningly human laugh, many elastic shoelace tips fell from his dark maw and onto my wooden floor, dancing for me as they bounced upon it.

  I stooped to collect them but paused as the dragon before me took flight, breaking the air with his vast leathery wings, and soaring back towards the tree where he feasts.

  I watched through the windswept night – time flowed like water now – and he soared up into overhanging branches of the beech tree, the six bird-feeders swaying in the cold breeze as I collapsed, sweating, into my little cot bed, bereft of energy.

  My spartan room swam around my vision as I lay my damp forehead on the hot pillow. Feathers fluttered on the wooden floor and twelve shadowy paws reached towards my heavy eyelids, dragging them down towards my cheeks. I tried to resist but my arms were too heavy, weighed down by a short life of sadness, and something else entirely.

  When I awoke – I've no comprehension of time at this point – my room, and indeed the rest of the house, had become a tapestry of orange and black. The sun was again fighting its losing battle with the house's shadowy past, but I had a renewed energy about me.

  Springing from the bed I fired up my laptop. It was plugged into a wall socket in a corner of the attic populated by a small lamp, which I left unlit.

  My hands trembled as I entered my password incorrectly twice, before succeeding on the third attempt, and I shook feverishly as I loaded an internet search.

  Sweat spilled from the top of my forehead to the bottom of my chin as I heard the familiar flap of wings and click of talons on the sill behind me, but I couldn't draw my eyes from the screen, even as I felt the presence of six shadows approach...

  A brief search for my address returned nothing, so I entered the name of the town and then “missing children”, and endured an agonising wait for the results to load.

  Top result is an article from a 1996 America Online archive:

  TREVOR CALLUM MATTHEWS: MURDERER!

  Struggling author Trevor Callum Matthews has been found guilty of the murder of his six young children at their country home in Sussex..

  This news comes weeks after his wife Tabitha had alerted authorities to disturbing posts Trevor had left on an internet forum for sufferers of mental health issues. Using the name “T1N CAN M4N” Trevor would often post about the hopelessness of trying to support a large family through writing fiction, after the commercial and critical failure of his debut novel 'Window Pain'.

  Tragically, after Tabitha left Trevor, he took his revenge by hanging each of his children from the large tree in their garden, before disappearing into th-

  The Man Behind You:

  After her car arrived with her inside and a forgotten passenger underneath, I knew we’d have a long road ahead.

  Much shorter than the road behind us, though.

  When we finally got there, her hair drizzled glitter over the bar as she acquired drinks I doubt she paid for.

  We sit.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “The man behind you”

  “What’s he looking at?”

  “He’s looking at you looking at me,” I say, as I swallow the ring I’d slipped into the glass she handed back to me.

  The Dark Arm: A British Ghost Story

  By Alex Boast

  The Butcher – Cold Storage:

  I belong here, in the cold, with the dead.

  Sometimes I feel like I was never born.

  I guess all sadness really is, is identifying the need for change, and being unable to make that change come about.

  That must be why I’m so sad all the time, that and the nightmares.

  Most people just think they’re unhappy, but they could change if they wanted to, right? Normally – for them – it’s just about understanding or perspective.

  Somebody said that curiosity killed the cat. Convenience will kill humans, something we’ll all discover when we die alone of consumption and heartbreak, fat and disgusting on expensive leather sofas at the age of 40.

  Maybe modern life has become a race for recognition, one where it’s possible to win by cheating, but at such terrible costs.

  Like I said: most people can change.

  I can’t.

  I’ll never have a family.

  I’ll never feel love.

  I belong here; with the dead, in the cold, alone with my jealousy.

  It doesn’t bother me so much anymore; the cold, not since I made my first real friend anyway.

  George Lazenby.

  He distracts me from my frosty breath and the constant shivering, as I leave little presents of unpacked pork scratchings on the window sill. I like to leave the window open because it encourages him to visit. Also, it’s colder inside the Butcher’s than outside.

  Once I’ve left George’s breakfast, I leave the shop front - nobody’s coming in - and head out back, into the cold storage.

  The only interaction I have with my boss, the Butcher, is scribbled notes in scrawled pencil, and the deliveries.

  Today it’s halved pig carcasses, yesterday it was halved cows.

  Today’s note reads: “Pigs”; yesterday’s read “Cows”.

  There’s also my weekly cheque, I’d forgotten it’s Sunday morning. One hundred entire English pounds.

  Thanks boss. Yeah, it isn’t much, but in all my 16 years on this cold planet I’ve never felt so rich.

  I don’t pay rent, I have a job as a butcher’s apprentice, and I’ve met a girl.

  Why then, am I so sad?

  She doesn’t notice me, that’s why. I’ll tell you about her and the others later.

  For now I need to unpack and hang the dead swine.

  I drag the huge box right to the back of cold storage, past the blooded, meaty horrors we’ve so far failed to sell, to the sinister looking metal meat hooks. Sometimes you can still see the animals frozen death-faces. I try not to look at the one-eyed cows with their dead tongues hanging out.

  You’d find it funny to look at me, let me tell you. I am completely and totally lopsided. I would imagine most butchers, carpenters or stonemasons are. Everyone has their stronger arm.

  Mine, my right one, is ridiculous.

  So pale it’s almost see-through, pulsing with freezing blue veins. Wiry sinews work their way up my forearm and well into my oversized bicep; I grab half a pig by the shoulder with it and raise the heavy meat onto the hook. This is a smaller one, but it still weighs 34 kilograms. I steady myself with the left arm and swing, but my right is taking the load, swelling and bulging in the most unattractive way.

  This is what I do all day, every day. If you’re struggling to imagine how freakish and weird my strong pale arm looks, maybe I should describe the rest of me. That will help, yes.

  I’m average size for a boy my age, maybe a little wide thanks to my odd right side, standing around 6 foot.

  But I’m basically an albino.

  It’s like the cold British air, coupled wit
h the atmosphere of my workplace and the crushing loneliness of my life has permeated my skin and hair. I look like a ghost, a pale shadow.

  Longish white hair creeps down my forehead to stab me in the eyes as I work, and I often flick it out of the way with a twist of my neck. My eyes are a little too far apart, and have a pinkish hue in the whites: I sleep little, it’s too cold.

  Between them is a nose that resembles a dagger made of ice. The only thing I can guess about my father – or indeed mother – is that he must have had a big nose and pale complexion too.

  I’m happy to say, that after three miserable years of living as a teenager in London, I’ve sprouted some whiskers. Much like the white or green tendrils erupting from a rotten potato, my face is an overgrown tribute to something natural and masculine. A cartoonish, hideous caricature of a real man.

  I can’t be nice to look at, no.

  Which, I suppose, is why nobody looks at me, or acknowledges me.

  Even when the Butcher rings the shop phone (I don’t have a mobile) he says “hello?” several times and puts the phone down, despite my answering and pleading with him to hear my voice.

  Who does he think he’s paying? Who does he think sorts all his produce?

  I can’t even remember how I got the job. I’ve just always been here. Nobody ever comes in during my hours of 6am to noon, but when I return from my walks in the evening, things have moved, disappeared or changed, and there’s always something wonderful left for me to eat: a stale bacon sandwich, some sausages, or if I’m lucky, a nice steak.

  I finish hanging all the dead meat, cold, slimy blood slick on my bone-white fingers, and am delighted by the fluttery arrival of George.

  I leave all the doors open to listen for him, which I probably shouldn’t do, but it’s so cold this December I don’t worry about the storage warming up.

  I jostle back to the shop front and sure enough, there he is on the sill, to the right of the till and the serving counter. Fat old George, who I’ve been feeding way too much.

  You can hardly see his little talons under the mighty expanse of his breast, just a hint of orange claw hiding beneath his rough, greenish feathers. He’s beautiful, my friend George, a dark little rainbow of grey, black, white and green, with a flash of pink too – like me.

  He coos and squeezes out liquid pigeon-waste onto the already covered windowsill (I remove the pigeon spikes that the local council place every morning, but they keep putting them back) and, grateful for this gift, I scoop it up as much of it as I can and rub it through my hands, relishing the momentary warmth, before washing it off in the basin beneath the packed counter.

  The storefront is so tiny – so as to make room for more storage in the back – that only two or three people could queue up for their meat, in single file.

  Various certificates won by the Butcher adorn the walls, but other than that and the little stool I’m sat on, there’s very little to look at, apart from all the meat.

  It looks, and smells, incredible.

  We don’t just sell parts of pigs and cows, we also sell chickens and game birds, venison, turkey and more, along with the occasional fish. The counter before me would be a veritable nightmare for a vegetarian.

  Funny to think about how much death I am surrounded by. George and I are the only souls to inhabit this place, and I can see he’s working himself up for a flight, ready to leave now he’s pecked at everything I left for him.

  He’s got so heavy he needs a good running start to get airborne. This involves reversing along the three feet of the windowsill at an incredibly slow, wobbly pace. It’s REALLY funny when a nearby lorry reverses at the same time and makes that beeping noise. We’re on a busy road in the north of the world’s capital, after all, stashed away in a metropolis, not a hint of greenery or nature anywhere, just concrete and endless grey.

  He fluffs up his feathers.

  He’s ready.

  George runs with all his chubby might, flapping once or twice as he falls from the edge of the sill (this is my favourite part, waiting to see whether he has mastered the small drop to the filthy, wet street yet). I take a breather, and there he is, soaring into the sky with all the majesty of one of the Christmas turkeys sat a foot away from me.

  “Goodbye George, see you soon!” I shout after him, as I wonder, for the 1095th (give or take) time where he might go when he’s not with me.

  I hope he doesn’t have other friends. I’d be jealous.

  I look up to the ticking wooden clock on the wall, watching its thin gold hand pop at a rate that seems much slower than once a second.

  It’s nearly time to go. Time to see some friends of my own.

  I slip on my leather jacket (charity shop) and listen to the rustle of receipts and the jingle of change. My jeans greet my jacket in the same way as I stand and wrap several thin scarves around my neck (looted from big black sacks left outside of said charity shop). They do nothing to combat the cold.

  Better get walking.

  London Roads:

  It isn’t a long walk to the little gothic church I go to, but it’s always an interesting one.

  I like to look at people.

  I look at them not looking at me, deliberately avoiding the darkly dressed white spectre that lumbers up the street every day, misshapen and slow.

  It’s a nice part of the city, somewhere north-west I think, so people dress like they’ve got things they don’t have: nice cars; flashy jobs; trophy wives; expensive au pairs for the many children; Bugatti baby-carriers; Iphone 8s, the latest Playstation or Xbox, friends, love and happiness.

  I’d be overjoyed to have just one nice pair of shoes, or a fancy tweed jacket with many pockets. I could keep my prayer books in them. Everything I own was a hand-me-down from an anonymous benefactor. Odd shoes of which neither fit (not even by accident, come on…), tight-fitting t shirts that are stained and smell. Underwear you really don’t want me to describe.

  I tried cutting my own hair with a pair of scissors, to look more like the boys that go to the colleges nearby, but now it’s just spikey and jagged, angry, a big white spider I wear as a fear-helmet. I’d love to fit in, to look the same as everyone else, but I’m resigned to the fact I never will.

  I use a machine at a dodgy cash-converter shop inhabited by a small, hat-wearing man behind a counter, to exchange my cheque for £85 in cash. I’m not sure what to do with the £35 I’ll have left for the week.

  The people here in this area of pawnshops and the like – rather than back on the high-street near the Butcher’s and the schools – look more like me: tired, grubby, weathered but young. Still, they’ve swapped their hands for screens they’d tear their hearts out to power if the battery were to run out. I’d love to care about anything as much as people do about their technology.

  Earphones dangle from clueless ears and I find myself wondering how much a music player might cost. Do they come with the music on already? or do you need to pay more to put the music on? I hear music when cars drive past, but it’s nothing like what I hear at church. Organs and pipes and wind or string instruments and soulful lyrics dripping in meaning have been rendered obsolete by a droning, monotonous bassline.

  But I want a music player.

  Maybe I’ll steal one from the youths that hang out in packs by the fried chicken shops. It would be so easy to bump into a little one and rifle through his pockets…

  No.

  No.

  Not steal.

  I will purchase one, with the money I earn.

  I am a good boy, better now. I don’t steal, I don’t swear, I don’t drink. Not anymore: now I go to church and I’m in love and I’m nearly there.

  First though, I want to see Hope and Destiny.

  It might only be early in the afternoon, but you can find anything in London if you know where to look. Even the nicer bits have a seedy underbelly, where I used to spend time as an urchin, a pick-pocket, a thief and a loser.

  Now I just go to have a look, curious, be
cause it’s one of the two places where I feel at home. A sense of community. Recognized.

  Down the back alleys, past rats, rubbish bins, boarded up pubs and a lot of pigeons (do they know George? Is he here too?) is a little bridge. It’s ancient and derelict. I’m not even sure what’s on top of it, but I sure know what’s underneath it, in this lonely part of town, spitting distance from the hustle and bustle of the busy roads and the cars and the pushchairs and the crying children.