THUGLIT Issue Twelve

by Marks, Leon

  Her head rose and she met my eyes for the first time since I left the room. They contained the only color left in my world. "Because you're the Salesman."

  "That's right. Because I'm the Salesman."

  I shifted into drive and slowed past her, careful not to spray gravel as I pulled away. I left the Starry Nite Motel in the opposite direction we had come from. In my rearview, I watched her shadow fade from view, obscured as she was by the darkness. She could place me at the scene. She could ID the van.

  I checked the mirror once more, but she was long gone. Gone to the ghosts. Gone to dust. Murder stalked all four corners of the world, I thought then.

  An intersection without a light was just a half-mile away. I turned and began following the road as the cornfield consumed the van from either side. The green stalks stretched and yawned in front of me; growing at the tips, pulling away for what seemed like forever and the fog and the mist and the ghosts broiled around the van like smoke as the metal bullet I was in shot down the barrel of a cornfield and straight through the heart of the country.

  Suicide Chump

  by T. Maxim Simmler

  Truth is, if it weren't for me, Geoff would've kicked the bucket three months ago, so one might be inclined to think he'd milk his new lease on life, carpe the bloody diem and show a bit of gratitude instead of being an obnoxious, parasitic haemorrhoid and fuckmonger. So, given the opportunity, you can bet your right testicle that I'd do it different this time. I'd stay in the pub half an hour longer, and the one and only time I'd have heard Geoff's name then would've been in the local news section of the Mirror; a little paragraph about some sad tit who caught his ride into that good night under the last train from Lime Street and had his tribe scattered halfway to Piccadilly.

  Everything's a fucksight easier in hindsight, innit?

  My day had already been one huge cluster of black shite and buggery. I had spent ten hours trying to tweak and salvage a financial analysis we had managed to botch up so badly, it was begging for a mercy shoot. An epileptic toddler, banging his head randomly on the keyboard, would have come up with better figures. I had drawn the short end of the stick and had to call our biggest customer, breaking him the news that by the end of the week, his portfolio was going to buy him a pint and a hole in the sand in Zimbabwe. Three generations working hard and honest, investing wisely and warily, each one passing proudly a stately asset to the next to preserve, and we fucked it up in five minutes flat. Just because someone was too busy getting his pole waxed by the new research assistant to notice a sudden, steep drop of the index swap curves. A few minutes later, a money shot worth seven-point-four million was dangling from the girl's nose.

  If the customer hadn't been quite the annoying cunt and the blowjob so stellar, I would have been devastated. Also, to survive in the world of high finance risk management, it helps to be a bit of a sociopath.

  But I knew that we were looking at a long dry stretch now. A lot of our clients would stop returning our calls and pull out their investments. Our competition would make sure that within a month, even the one or two prospective punters who came back from a long holiday under a rock had a detailed report and a snarly Forbes column in their inbox. This might explain some of the more bewildering things I did in the next weeks. I was in dire need of cheering up.

  I was in dire need of booze, too, so I went into the first pub I could find—a derelict shitter with a beer pump and bottles of cheap schnapps covered in dust. Four brandies and three pints later the world looked better. After two more brandies I figured the hen next to me quite dishy and started to chat her up. Another pint later I reckoned that, come daylight and sobering up, the swanky minge was probably as attractive as a carp with a wig and swayed outside for a quick smoke. The distilled piss was giving me heartburn and it sure wasn't worth the money they charged, so I took a few careful steps to the left and legged it. I ran through the park and past a small churchyard. If I squeezed myself through a hedgerow and crossed the tracks, I could be home in less than ten minutes. My jacket got stuck between two thorny twigs and while I tried to yank it free without causing a pricy tear, I heard a long sigh blending into a high-pitched whine. I squinted into the darkness and made out a medium-sized grey sack wreathing between the rails.

  That was how I met Geoff.

  I wiped a few ragged, hard leaves from my trousers, fiddled a Chesterfield from the pack and lit it. The sack wriggled and cursed.

  "You alright there, mate?" I asked.

  "What? Am I what?" he answered in a nasal, verge-of-sobbing vibrato.

  "Now I was wondering if you've slipped there, y'know, seeing you flat on your arse on the gravel."

  "Please. Go away." He sounded like a weepy five-year-old begging for a slap.

  "Can't do that, I'm afraid." I crouched next to him. "It's not that I'm conscience-smitten, I'm so fucking bevvied up, I won't remember a thing. But if I let you kick the bucket here, my karma gets arse-fucked back to pre-evolutionary status and I can't have that."

  "Please, go away. Please."

  I've got to admit that the sound of his voice almost made decide to let fate and Northern Rail run their course. The tit wants to top himself? Genius. And quite likely what nature had intended anyway.

  "Look, mate. What's wrong with pills? Or a razor straight over the wrists? Maybe a plastic bag over the napper? I get the appeal of lying here—slam, bam, mincemeat, man—but just think for a second about the poor cunt driving the train. Mental crack-up and post-traumatic stress disorder. He hears the whistle of a train, he starts shitting his skivvies and all that's left for him is a life on the dole. That'd be quite the pisser, right?"

  He sat up slowly, and in the pale, flavescent light of the street lamps behind us I could make out a puffy, reddish face with a tiny knob of Plasticine for a nose and huge, sticky-out ears. It looked like his brain had satellite reception. Add a pair of pouty fish lips and slicked-back, thinning hair and he eerily resembled a blown-up fetus. Meeting that mug in the mirror every morning might make me suicidal, too.

  I stretched out my hand and, though he hesitated a bit, he finally grabbed it and pulled himself up. Of course there was no civil way to bid him adieu now. You save a guy's life and you're stuck with him for a time. So we took a detour and headed for a round-the-clock kiosk. Well, I was heading, Geoff scuffled behind, soles dragging over the pavement, punctuating every second step with a soggy snuffle. Obviously the time to listen to his sad tale had now come—and assuming it would take some time, I bought two huge cans of Elephant beer and wiggled one in front of his Play-Doh beezer.

  "I don't really drink."

  Who said never to trust a guy who doesn't drink?

  "Getting run over by a train may be a bit more hazardous to your health than a brew, pal." I said and took a long draught, while Geoff stared at his can like an alien artifact before nipping some. Immediately his face contorted. It was the strangest sight—his features all seemed to skid and then tighten in the middle as if someone was trying to Hoover up his mug. If I still did coke, I'd be laughing my tits off just looking at him. Some Sunday morning cartoon must be missing a featured character.

  "See. That's the proper way to deal with a shitty day. Two guys, sitting together, drinking a beer." I patted his back encouragingly. "Silently." I added, sotto voce.

  "Thanks." he said, doodling little spirals with his fingers on his leg. "Sorry I spoiled your night."

  "No biggie."

  I felt generous. It's not always easy for me to find the right, generally accepted emotions towards things that happen to other people.

  "We don't need to talk about it, if you don't want to. Right? Cause it's none of my business, being a stranger and all." I suggested.

  "Oh...no. Sometimes a stranger can understand you better than your so-called friends."

  Fuck.

  "Not that I have any friends." Cue another long sigh.

  So he told me his story, interrupted by groaning, nipping his beer, and some tear
s.

  It wasn't a short one. I downed two more Elephants and had to buy a fresh pack of Chesterfields before he reached the final sob. It was funny enough at the beginning, I admit that. How he got a chemistry kit for Christmas from his parents when he was five, secretly kept on toying with it well after his bedtime and the shit the kids gave him for that at the orphanage. Turns out, people are somewhat reluctant to adopt a boy who blew up his Mum and Dad, so he had to live there till he was seventeen and everyone had grown bored of bullying seven shades of shit out of him.

  But it got redundant fast. The Cliffs Notes version was that Geoff was the kind of guy who managed to fuck up fucking up. Girls either left him cause they couldn't stand his constant whining or grew tired of seeing him losing three jobs a week. Traumatic stress is one thing, but the hard truth is—that after some time—even the most charitable chick's compassion over his grim nights as an involuntary bumboy for the orphanage's clerical staff will wane. And then a psychological erectile dysfunction is nothing more than a mere limp dick.

  Keep in mind, we're talking about women desperate enough to consider Geoff, the blobfish boy, a catch in the first place.

  At least he had kept the same job for the last three years; a lowly drone in front of an Excel sheet, entering data and updating profiles eight hours a day. The kind of work that slowly grinds down your gyri cerebri, till your brain looks like a big, soft gob of old gum. I can't say I was surprised to hear that he liked it, never called in sick, never turned up late. It broke his heart when the company outsourced the Excel brigade after they decided that a bunch of semi-literate teenage Paki girls were qualified enough for the drudgery and could be paid with shiny marbles. The funny thing was that the company was part of a business conglomerate we counseled in financial matters. I even remembered sending the memo with the stern advice to dump as many branches as possible into some former colonies. Small world, eh? Geoff didn't think it was funny. Geoff was a bore.

  His voice, droning out his stream-of-consciousness biography, dabbled like elevator Muzak. I found myself missing a few chunks of his story, soothed by the monotone sound-waves and dozy from the alcohol. It was easy enough to fill out the blanks later by inserting random mishap, and assertive nodding every few minutes seemed to be all the endorsement he needed. His looks got boring too, once you wrapped your mind around the fact that in a few cases evolution obviously had gone straight from marine animal to man. Geoff even smelled boring, like a pH-adjusted, no-name soap.

  What kind of a name was "Geoff" anyway? It's not something you call a human being. It's the sound a sweaty, fat guy makes after slumping into his easy chair.

  Despite all this, when we finally parted, I handed him my card, made him promise not to run back to the tracks and gave him a quick hug, though the awkwardness of the gesture constricted my muscles. Because, deep down, I'm a pretty decent guy.

  Nah, I'm shitting you.

  I did it because the onslaught of squalor, dreariness and exasperation made me feel better. Yes, I had screwed up a huge business deal. Yes, I was looking at a somewhat shaky financial future. Yes, if someone really investigated the way we fucked the quid away over the last year, I'd face a future where a seven-foot, tattooed black dude would call me Cherie. But it could be worse. I could be Geoff.

  It's something I had to tell myself quite often during the next days. All customers, bar one, had withdrawn their portfolios when I logged into my laptop the next morning. Some of those fucks had made profits that would buy you a cozy Caribbean island thanks to us, had invited us to spend weekends on their yachts and shared old booze, coke, pills and their wives with us, stopping short of offering us a blowjob for our efforts and success.

  Wait…

  One hotel chain heiress did suck my dick while shoving a finger worth five thousand quid in manicure up my arse.

  None of them would touch us now. Our acquisition managers came up with nothing. For some time we could dodge the bullet and dabble around by speculating with our estimated net worth, but apart from being semi-illegal and a pretty desperate and stupid thing to do, our estimated worth was plunging towards zero.

  Geoff, however, didn't phone me. The police did, scaring me into touching cloth before they told me they hadn't called on behalf of HM Revenue and Customs, but because a certain Geoff Phlebs had named me as his trusted person.

  That little, pathetic bag of fart.

  I grabbed the bottle of Glenfiddich from the cupboard, took a solid swig straight from the bottle and pinched the number the filth had given me. I was greeted by a hollow, solemn, teary voice.

  "I am so sorry, Simon. I fucked up."

  I sat down, put him on the speaker and opened Minesweeper on my computer.

  "Geoff, mate. Slowly. Just tell me what happened."

  What had happened was that the stupid fuck had bought a flask of schnapps, swallowed twenty paracetamol and called an ambulance. Who, in the name of arse, tries to off himself with paracetamol? It dawned on me that good old Geoff might be a bit of an attention whore.

  "They'll keep me here for two days now, have me talk to a psychiatrist."

  Here's what wrong with our health service in a nutshell—in a perfect society a doctor would gather some nurses around Geoff's bed, tell them what brought him there and then they'd all have a good, long laugh and kick Geoff out of the clinic.

  It was so absurd and blindingly stupid, I felt better already. Elevated.

  "I hate to ask you, Simon, but could you maybe come around and fetch the keys to my flat? Someone has to feed my cat."

  "Say again?"

  "My cat, Donny. He's outside most of the day, but he needs his evening bowl."

  After I hung up, I started to giggle. I couldn't help it, the giggles came like hiccups, spastic convulsions of the midriff and turned into hysteric laughter.

  I was going to feed the fucking cat.

  If I had given a fleeting thought to Geoff's surroundings, I'd more or less have ended up with the sore sight his flat offered. There were no books, no plants, no display of private things whatsoever. Blindingly white woodchip wallpaper gave the room the atmosphere of a dentist's waiting room. And he kept it incredibly clean. No specks, no dust and somehow he seemed to have vacuumed any smell out of the air, too. The floor was coated with a plain grey carpet (the kind that went out of fashion after the Blitz), a cream IKEA couch with little yellowish cushions, a glass table and a twenty-inch TV. Neither CDs nor vinyl.

  I copped a look into his bedroom. It was empty but for one huge faux Biedermeier wardrobe with tiny fat angels carved into the upper corners. He probably kept his mummified Mom there. No bed, so he slept on the couch, just to get some crippling back-pain he could grouse about.

  I stepped on the balcony for a cig. Even a distinctly non-suicidal person like myself could hardly look down the twelve stories from here to asphalt without suffering some heavy vertigo and feeling a bit lured into taking a header straight to eternity. Geoff's seriousness about leaving his mortal coil behind got more dubious every day.

  And then I sat down and waited for the cat to show up. I don't even know why I wanted to see the furry shitball. I can't stand cats. In the end I hung on for over four hours, staring at the wall till I felt lost in the Arctic. When I heard the cat flap squeak, I went into the kitchen. A rusty red, blowsed troll stared at me. He hissed, back arched.

  "You're one ugly motherfucker," I said, grabbed the dried food, rattled a bit with the box and put it back on the shelf. The loppy bugger actually looked surprised.

  "Catch a mouse, you fat slob." When I closed the door behind me, Donny still gazed dumbfounded. I called Geoff.

  "Wee Donny's doing great, mate. He says you should chin up."

  "Thank you so much, Simon." For the first time, the monotonous droning gave way to an almost cheery emphasis on my name. "It may sound stupid, I know, but I think that I'm only still alive because my subconsciousness tells me that my cat needs me."

  "Nothing stupid about that, Geoff.
" It's not stupid, it's the most asinine, deliriously harebrained piece of verbal dickcheese I've ever heard.

  "They'll discharge me tomorrow morning."

  Did I detect some undercurrent there? As in 'so-why-not-pick-me-up'? I cut him short.

  "Great news, man. I've got to hurry back to the office, so just give me a call when you feel like it."

  When I pocketed my phone, I realized that I felt better again. The dead-end flat, the charming, subconscious linkage to a fat cat, the sight of him at the hospital, squished as the fifth patient into a room fit for three, blanket up under his chin—it all lifted my spirits enormously. I was so energized, I ran back to my office, called one of our former customers cold, and sweet-talked him into signing back with us. Geoff was like a healthy version of cocaine, pumping me up and making me feel invincible. Hail fucking Geoff.

  But just like coke, the buzz waned quickly, and in this hopefully-only-transitory phase of business, I needed all the buzz I could get. And Geoff didn't call. Apparently I couldn't ring him. It would make me feel…I don't know…dependent. It's not helpful if I felt like a twat for making the first move, he had to come to me to make the magic work.

  It was high time to take measures.

  Six days later he phoned.

  "Simon?" His voice was empty. "I think I've slit my wrists."

  He thought? How can someone be in doubt about the state of one's wrists? It's a binary operation. Wrists are either slit or not. This isn't quantum physics. He isn't Schrödinger's Geoff.

  "Holy shit. Call a bloody ambulance."

  "I don't think so." Long pause. "There's no reason anymore to carry on."

  Say it, Geoff. Say it...

  "Donny…he's dead." I waited for the crying to subside.

  "That's awful." I said.

  For all the stress the damn cat had caused me, it'd well better be dead for two. The first two days I sat in my car for eight hours straight, waiting for the fat fuck to show up. No dice. And over the following three days I found out that Donny was quite the quick and cunning bastard, hooking and crooking like a young rabbit. This morning I finally caught Donny, ran him over twice, just to make sure and flattened the little shit until it looked like a russet bathroom rug. It cost me twenty-five Euros to get the Porsche speckless again, but it was money well spent. Some posh tossers managing a delicacies chain store were to meet me later that day and doped up on Geoff's pathetic dirge, I'd wrap the wimps around one finger and fuck them with another.