Skewered

by Jones, Benedict J

“Then I’m dead,”

  “How much do you owe them?”

  “Nearly twelve grand,”

  I take a deep drink.

  “You know what they’ll do to you for that?”

  He nods.

  “You got your passport?”

  “Yes,”

  He pats his breast pocket.

  “Can you get some cash together?”

  He nods.

  “Then do it. Call it what markers you’ve got and get the fuck out of it,”

  “I’ve got friends in Dubai. You think Spears can reach there?”

  I shrug.

  “Your best chance though.”

  He nods.

  “I am sorry, about Mounira – tell her that.”

  “Never met her.”

  “Then who?”

  “Nathalie.”

  He looks me in the eye and then drains the last of his brandy.

  “Tell that bitch she’ll get what’s coming,”

  “Hold your mouth and get the fuck out.” I reply.

  He stands and then reaches into his pocket and throws a Polaroid onto the table.

  “I hope I never see you again.” he says

  I raise my glass in salute.

  “Likewise.”

  *

  Nathalie never replied to any of my calls or texts. I rub the scar on my hand and wonder. Andrea told me that Nathalie had gone to work in Stockholm, had opened up her own gallery – she’d come into some money.

  I sigh. Take a mouthful of rioja and look at the Polaroid pinned at the top of my canvas; Nathalie in all her glory. It was in the box with the other pictures. I touch my palm again and think about scars, some you can see and some you can’t. Dip into my paint and start to work.

  Like Clockwork

  A cog turns, gears click, discs spin and it is as though my whole world has fallen into place. I watch as the parts move in their peculiar mechanical way and then I remember to breathe. I feel like I have managed to reach inside my own mind and turn a dream of smoke into the tangible form that lies on the bench in front of me. My hands run over the hard moving parts as if I am daring them to vanish back to mist beneath my fingers.

  The room is dark except for a few lamps and the shadows flex and roll as the machinery continues its cycle. I close my eyes and let the beautiful click-click rhythm fill my head. When I open my eyes again I do not know how much time has passed. I have never felt such peace. But my dream is not complete. I let myself touch, once again, the naked brass and steel and I shiver with pleasure at the thought of the finished article.

  Outside the sun light is harsh even though the morning is cold. Dirty snow lines the gutters and I throw my hood up against the brightness. As early as it is, the usual shower of drunks has already begun to congregate around the benches on the parade; missing teeth, rheumy eyes, unwashed coats and cans of super strength amnesiac. I cross the square to avoid their animal chatter. The noises of the city around me seem at odds with the machine song which is still turning circles in my mind. I begin to tap my fingernails against the blade of the knife in my pocket in an attempt to mimic the click-click tattoo in my head. The queue at the bus stop makes bile rise in my throat so I pound my way across the concrete and try to think good thoughts.

  I cut away from the main road and stab into the alleys and backstreets. As I walk the forgotten web of grey places it becomes easy, for a few minutes at least, to believe that I am utterly alone and my breathing slows to mirror the click-click of the gears and cogs that echoes in my ears. My calm is short lived. The boom-boom of a car’s sound system drowns out the rhythm in my mind and shatters my peace. I stop and press my forehead against the rough brick wall of a building. I can feel the bass from the car through the brick and I continue to press until the sound recedes and my forehead is left raw. Then I turn and carry on into the depths of the back streets.

  My heart now beats out of time with the clockwork rotations of my dream. I stop. I stare. Through the window of a dry cleaners I catch a glimpse of a nest of dark hair that has hooked my eyes, dark, dark hair that reminds me of Caitlin O’Reerdon; my first love, hair the colour of unmilked coffee and eyes like storm clouds. I would stare at her hair for hours, sit behind her in class and try to hold the smell of it in my nose under I could remember it in my dreams. Then the memory comes of the day I couldn’t help myself, the day that I tried to trim a lock of her hair, the teacher catching me, detention and then Leon Carver splitting my lip and leaving me on the floor at the school gates. I just watched Caitlin after that, from beneath hooded lids, from across the playground or the other side of the classroom. Mum was still in chemo then, broken. The summer came and then afterwards Caitlin went to an all-girls school and I was shipped off to the local mixed comprehensive. Mum had died in the second week of the holidays. I close my eyes and try to remember the smell of Caitlin’s hair. I don’t open them until I stumble off the kerb further down the street.

  I’m breathing too hard, too fast, and I begin to run, trying to outpace the old dreams of the past. I run and I run and I run, through the door to the flats, past the lift and up the stairs. I take the steps two at a time and soon the muscles in my legs burn like bleach in the eyes. Through the front I go and into the cave like darkness of the flat beyond my heart fluttering in my chest like a bird trapped in a cage of bones and it only begins to slow when I caress the gears and cogs and run my fingers over the rods and wires. I leave the lamps off and lay down on the sofa. The rhythm of the machine returns and sleep comes easy.

  When I awake, the darkness clings to me like a shroud and my breathing is slow and even. I gulp water greedily from the tap and then take to the streets again. The city never sleeps; it merely dozes but within that dozing, as I walk, I can feel some semblance of freedom. I roam the orange lit backstreets and deserted side roads like an urban fox on the hunt for scraps. I scale a chain link fence and follow the tracks into the tube tunnels and I completely escape the confines of the streets and boulevards.

  My Dad couldn’t be there for me, I realise that now, my Mum had kept him grounded and without her anchorage he floated, lost, in a world of booze, bookies and melancholy. One Saturday morning my Granddad turned up, packed a bag of my things, sat me in his car and had a talk with Dad. At the end of the talk I left with Granddad and never saw my father again.

  As I walk the tracks I think of secondary school and my second love. I saw her on the first day and for weeks could think of nothing but the terrain of her face; the rounded hills of her cheekbones, the peak of her soft nose and the bow curve of her lips. Her name was Yaz Hasan and I spent hours attempting to map her features in a sketchbook. But no matter how many times I drew and redrew her face I could never quite capture the essence of the beauty I saw in it. It would have been okay if I had just stuck with the drawing but my frustration with my inability to trap her face on a page made me borrow Granddad’s camera and keep it in the pocket of my blazer until I saw my chance. Yaz had noticed me watching and seen me sketching and she normally just gave a shy smile and looked away. I tried to be discreet when I snapped a picture of her but she saw, she saw and her friends saw and her cousin Ozzie saw. They caught me in the toilets after school; Ozzie his brother Sam and two of their friends. When they left Granddad’s camera was splintered and crushed, there was blood on the floor and my piss was rusty for a week. My heart was broken and that heart more than the beating or the punishments when Granddad found out about his camera.

  I had no friends so I spent more and more time with Granddad in his shop. I watched over his shoulder as he fiddled and tinkered with watches and clocks.

  “Treat them right and they’re more reliable than people.” He would tell me. I smile as I remember Granddad’s words.

  I began working with Granddad and he soon saw that I was willing and more than able. It made him smile. My own father, long since found hanging in a cheap hotel, had taken no intricacies of the trade but I wanted to know it all – what made things work in the wa
y in which they did. And that in turn led to other problems. The neighbours caught me with their dog, a bad tempered mongrel that barked at me whenever I passed. If you could fix a broken watch by getting at its insides then why not an animal? I know now that I was wrong, animals are what they are – unreliable. They cannot be fixed. Granddad tried but I was sent away to the special school. The others that I found there were much worse than me – I had tried to fix something whereas all they knew was how to break and destroy. But there I found my third love – Siobhan Lacey. Her legs moved with the grace of predators I had seen in nature films. When I waited for sleep in my room, that I thought of as a cell, all I could think about was the slim grandeur of the muscles in those legs and how they made her arse sway as she walked. I watched but did not act. The past had taught me what happened when I made a wrong move. I was learning, the special school was teaching me to be sly. I watched Siobhan and studied her habits. Siobhan Lacey was a drug and alcohol abuser who had been caught in the passenger seat of a stolen car after a homeless man was burnt three quarters to death. My Granddad sent me money and other things to make my life easier so I swapped, traded and bought the things I needed.The odd half bottle of cheap Vodka, ten wrap of chocolate coloured cannabis resin or packet of cigarettes and she would let me run my hands up her legs from her ankles, over her thighs, to the arse that lay above. I came as I touched her.For a few weeks I was in heaven. But like all things heaven has its limits and time was one of them. I was released back into Granddads care and for a while I thought about getting myself sent back so that I could be with her but then I lost myself in working at the shop.

  When I emerge from the tube tunnels the night sky stretches above me like a dark protective parasol. In the distance I can see the first lightening of the day and so I lift my feet and trudge back towards the flat, spent from my nocturnal walk. When I get back I keep the curtains drawn and tinker with my creation – oil the gears, smooth the motion.My body demands sleep but my mind is a cruel task master. I try to remember the last time I ate but I can’t. When I peek out through the curtains I see that the snow is falling again. I cannot see anyone else out on the expanse of the estate. I smile and collect my tools.

  My feet crunch across the snow and fragments of bodies like chopped up photographs fill my mind; Caitlin, Granddad, Yaz, my mother, Siobhan, my father and all the others.

  I was in prison when Granddad died, they wouldn’t let me out for the funeral. I first met Shelly Lennox when she came into the shop to have her watch fixed. As Granddad’s health had failed it fell to me to run the shop. The sun was bright and harsh the day she came in and a headache had been gnawing at my nerves all morning. When she passed me her watch my eyes touched on her hands; the perfect shape of each finger in relation to the next only spoilt by the engagement band around one finger. I found it hard to swallow and I could not look her in the eye as I took down her details – name, phone number, address…Three weeks later the Police caught me in her flat, her bedroom. I had only gone to take a pair of her gloves but when I saw her hand atop the duvet I could not help but stroke the backs of her fingers. A neighbour had seen me go in through the bathroom window. Shelly awoke as the Police arrived. The knife in my pocket added a year to my sentence. I only served nineteen months but they were a hard year and a half; spit in my dinner, boiling margarine thrown at me and a beating that had me pissing blood for a week. When I got out, Granddad was dead and the shop was gone. Prison gave me time though, time to think and time to plan. I thought about my loves from over the years and I began to plan.

  The house is silent when I enter. Special school and prison taught me a lot. I hear someone upstairs and I move towards the sound. The bathroom door is open and the light is on. A man stands pissing into the toilet, his relief audible. In one movement I pull his head back and cut his throat. I lay him down softly on the floor and turn out the light before heading to the bedroom. Soft snores come from beneath the sheets draw me nearer. I must make more noise than I think because she sits up and tries to blink the sleep from her dark eyes.

  “Hello, Yaz. Don’t worry, hon, I only need your face.”

  Fade to red.

  Back in the flat now. Tired, oh so tired. So much done, work finished but I feel like I have a lifetime of sleep calling to me. Slide the key in, turn the key, and wind you up. I can hear them now, outside on the estate like villagers of old psyching themselves up to break into the monsters castle. The police won’t be here for hours. No pitchforks and flaming torches out there; hammers, golf clubs, knives and bottles of petrol. The key turns quicker now, easier, because I’m eager to hear you click-click rhythm. I can hear the hands banging at the door. The locks will hold, for now at least. You stand, your arm rises and you offer me your/Shelly’s hand and I look up into your/Yaz’s eyes and I smile. You draw me into your embrace and I smell your/Caitlin’s hair. You move well on your/Siobhan’s legs and we dance around the clutter of the front room to the music of your cogs and gears. The front door collapses and they flood flat. The hammering starts on the front room door and I know it won’t be long now. Finally I have you and now they have come to take you from me. Still, time for one last dance and you are willing, reliable, just like clockwork always is.

  Red Christmas

  They found Bill Riley hanging from a lamp post on the Old Kent Road, by a noose of fairy lights. The tiny bulbs had cracked and broken into the flesh of his neck, his face black above his collar. His fingers had been hacked off and lay on the pavement like a plate of spilled chipolatas.

  Dan Spence sat in the Surrey Docks Tavern nursing a pint of Kronenberg. Ghenghis and Stretch sat opposite him in silence. Stretch broke the quiet.

  “Well, what the fuck are we gonna do about it?”

  “Bill went to offer them money and look how well that turned out,” Dan replied.

  Ghenghis swore.

  “They’ll be coming for us next,” Stretch muttered “it was an accident anyways!”

  Ghenghis’ brown face had turned red from the drink.

  “Don’t think the Kennedys give a shit.”

  Dan stood up and headed outside for a smoke. As he sparked a Benson he looked up at the cold December sky and thought about his cell back in HMP Winchester – for a moment he wished he was back there.

  *

  Dan had been out of prison for five months and all he had to show for the time on the straight was a pocket full of shrapnel and an unpaid council tax bill. He was glad to be back with Ella and the kids but everywhere he went Christmas screamed at him. Now their dad was back the kids expected a lot, Ella more. Going straight was killing Dan by inches.

  He walked out of the flats and drew his coat tighter against the chill wind. It was mid-December so no chance of snow – never a white Christmas in London but still cold enough to keep a chill on the beer in your hand. Dan checked his coins; enough for a pint but not the bus as well. He grabbed a quick Kronenberg in Wheelan’s and then walked to the snooker hall in Lewisham. Stretch, Ghenghis and Bill had been waiting for him – they had a job on offer.

  *

  Ghenghis had been nailed to the Christmas tree in Southwark Park. They’d cut his cock off and stuffed it down his throat. The cops weren’t sure whether he’d choked to death or bled out – that was the coroner’s job, not theirs.

  Dan met Stretch in Wheelan’s.

  “What the fuck are we gonna do, Dan?”

  There was a whine in Stretch’s voice and Dan shrugged in response.

  “We can’t just wait for the Kennedys to come and get us!”

  The shopping bags around Dan’s feet rustled as he shifted his feet.

  “Not much we can do, mate.”

  Stretch’s hand twitched and his finger beat a four-to-the-floor rhythm on the table top.

  “Ain’t getting me like that!” Stretch’s voice dropped lower “look, Dan,”

  Stretch pulled up his McKenzie sweatshirt to show the butt of a revolver tucked in his waistband.

  “G
ot it off Fraser up Jamaica Road,”

  “And what’re you gonna do with it?”

  “Whatever needs doing? If Monty, Slim and Church reckon I’m going out like Bill and Ghenghis then I’ll fucking show them cunts!”

  “Easy, Stretch,”

  Eyes had turned towards them.

  “Sorry, Dan,”

  “No worries, mate. Ain’t our fault what happened.”

  *

  The job had been a simple one; robbing a cold store of four hundred prime turkeys. Bill knew a man they could shop the lot off to at eight quid a bird. More than three grand to split between the four of them and Dan knew that eight hundred pounds would sort out Christmas for the Spence family.

  A simple job but it didn’t play out that way. All they needed was white butcher coats, bolt cutters and four pairs of polished brass baubles. They’d pulled up in a borrowed white Transit Sprinter, cut the padlocks and loaded the pallets of fowl. Just as they finished up the cops rolled past in a meat wagon and they froze. One of the coppers nodded to their white coats and the wagon had rolled on but it had put the shits up them. Ghenghis reversed too quickly, burned rubber as he turned out into Mandela Way. He took the corners too fast and didn’t see the old woman until the last second – the second before she bounced over the bonnet and cracked her skull off the windscreen. What kind of little old lady was walking the back streets near the Old Kent Road at five in the morning - the kind who knew that no sane man would touch her on account of her sons.

  *

  Stretch was left out on the concrete of the car park of the Odeon cinema in Surrey Quays; they’d broke his arms and legs and tied him up with string like a Christmas day turkey before slitting his throat and stuffing his unfired revolver up his arse.

  On Christmas Eve Dan sat in Wheelan’s with Ella, the kids were at her mother’s. Dan reached into his pocket and took out a small box. He pushed the box across the table.

  “Go on, babes. You deserve an early present.”