by Jonny Glynn
She crossed her legs away from me and got out a book–Harry Potter and the Goblin’s Cock, or something like that. I settled back into my seat, looked out of the window and quietly contemplated the evening ahead. It was a beautiful evening, an Indian evening–the clouds rippling long and thin through a magnificent crimson sky. And beneath, a heaving multitude of lurching humans, spilling into the streets, out of pubs and bars and restaurants and cafés, drinking and laughing and chattering. Drunken drivellings, the lot of them–enjoying themselves, promoting themselves, and posturing. Look at them, I thought, all of these people–just as many, and as many more–all full of hopes and dreams–all of them deluded. Searching for something better–contentment, love, success. Someone to fuck. Or someone to blame. Or just a little chip of something extra, a moment’s brief respite from the nasty brutish solitary and cruel lot that is theirs. Poor awful humans, stupid to the end–waiting and hoping, enduring and surviving their meagre lives, certain of nothing but the sanctity of their own existence. All the same and one, but separate and alone…I sighed and closed my eyes, not knowing where to look, where I was heading or what I was going to do when I got there. It was my last night, and I was determined to make the most of it. The bus rumbled on, panting its way into town, I jostled off into a gentle doze…
When I woke the bus was shuddering, wheezing and coughing its way into Victoria Station. It pulled up second in a shattered line of resting 38s. The lights went off and on and off again, and the remaining stragglers got up and shuffled off. I remained seated, not going anywhere. My trousers were wet with semen. I glanced out of the window and saw the white Muslim girl, about whom I had been dreaming, disappearing into the station. I touched the wet patch on my trousers and felt the tip of my dwindling erection beneath. I wonder if she knew, I thought–and hoped that she had. I haven’t had a wet dream in years. A wet dream is the most heavenly experience in the entire lexicon of human experiences…
I dreamt that she turned to face me, met my eyes, and looked at me. I dreamt that in front of everyone on the bus she lifted her t-shirt to reveal her white naked skin and her large swollen breasts. My lips were on her, licking and nibbling her nipples. Her body was taut and arched and writhing, her head thrown back. She stood up and pulled her skirt up around her waist and then pushed her naked bristling pubes forward into my face. The smell of her was intoxicating, a musty dampness. I brought my mouth close into her sex and tasted her, she was sweet, like tangerines, and starting to moan. I cupped her buttocks in my hands and rolled and kneaded her flesh, my tongue tasting its way towards her clitoris and then working it with short sharp cat-like licks. I could feel her reaching and undoing my flies and fondling my cock–I was more than fully engorged. She knelt down in front of me, opened her mouth and showed me her tongue–it was a dark purple, matching exactly the colour of my knob. She wrapped her lips around the end of me and slurped and sucked and gurgled. I was going to come. She grabbed my balls and squeezed hard, pinching the base of my cock between her thumb and forefinger to stop me–this girl knew what she was doing. She then got down on all fours in the aisle between the seats, put her hands on her arse and peeled her thighs apart. Her pussy was clean and pink and wet. Her eyes were on me, over her shoulder, beckoning me to fuck her. The bus pulled up at a stop. I knelt down behind her and entered her. People got on and off, took their seats and watched as I fucked her. She was working her pussy muscles, gripping and rippling the length of my cock as I violently jammed away at her…It didn’t take long. As I came I pushed my thumb into her anus and she barked Allahu akbar, like a dog. I think I moaned. She must have known. I remember grunting and jerking and then her skin suddenly turned an electric copper green. And then she looked at me–met my eyes and looked into me. It was that rat from Sudder Street. Her chin bleeding puss. I pulled myself out of her, revolted. She scuttled across the floor and disappeared up a drainpipe. She’s a haunter, that one. And then I woke. My trousers wet with semen. I glanced back out of the window. The girl had gone. There were people everywhere, moving in every direction. The bus in front was packed to the gunnels and slowly starting to pull out…And then it happened.
A sudden bright white flash exploded before me. A kaleidoscope of silver lines drawn in rapid succession carnivalled in a blizzard of raging energy. A roaring booming explosion chased a hideous clattering screaming growl, and then a tearing rip of thunderous destruction as metal and glass ruptured and shattered in every direction. A hot black cloud of burning smoke and the unmistakable stench of sulphur engulfing everything in a raging pall of silence and then, in an instant, bursting open again into a hideous howling cacophony of screaming terror. The mutilated slaughtered cries of the damned. I touched my face and felt that one side had been lacerated with tiny cuts and was wet with blood. My eyes were stinging and blurred. In my ears there was a terrifying high-pitched whine, everything was abstracted and vivid. The back of the bus in front had been totally blown away, sheaves of twisted mangled metal had been thrown out, ripped and gnarled and torn apart, screaming jagged edges twisted black with fire and blood. The horror of bodies thrown in every direction, ripped and split apart. The dismembered remains strewn in a ten-metre radius. And the screaming, the screaming cries for help–Help me!–Help me!–Please somebody–help me!…I sat and watched. My clothes had been ripped from my body, my chest was bare and covered in dark soot and sweat and thin tracks of blood. I didn’t feel anything. Any pain. My head was still ringing from the explosion, my senses acutely aware but blinkered and jumping from one individual piece of information to the next, but doing so with incredible speed and rapidity, which made everything seem slow. I stood up, and acknowledged the fact that I was standing. I turned and slowly made my way down from the top deck, emerging at the back of the bus. People were running away, others, at a safe distance, were standing and watching…I turned, and without thinking walked directly towards the exploded bus. I stopped and looked at it. It was an incredible sight–an hallucination almost, distorted and dreamlike in the shimmering heat. The entire rear section had been blown apart and torn open. The front of the bus I had been sitting in was no more than three metres away and had taken its fair share of the blast. I looked back up at where I had been sitting. All the windows had been blown out and a section of the front corner of the roof had been peeled back. It was a miracle that I had survived. I put my eyes to the ground. Between the two buses lay bloody burning carnage. The walking wounded were starting to emerge, their bodies exposed, some more than others, men and women, ripped and blackened, staggering, bewildered and confused, half dead, about to die, wishing they were dead or wondering why they weren’t. We all looked at each other, and then looked away. One man was naked, his back was on fire, all his skin had blistered. He fell to his knees and burnt. A woman, with a long length of serrated metal ripped through her abdomen, writhed and spasmed in agony. A man tried to stand but only had one leg and fell awkwardly, slipping in his own blood. Another simply stood and wept. There were sirens and screams. People calling. Lacerated flesh. General chaos and confusion. Everything was cloaked in an evil darkness and choked with foul stinking fumes. I stood alone and stared. Surely this was Hell. The torn severed remains of what must have been a young girl lay folded and chopped at my feet, her left arm and half her torso. Her breast was young, the areola pink. On her wrist she wore a watch, a simple watch with a red leather strap and an old-fashioned round face. The short arm pointed south, the long arm south-south-east…I moved towards the bus, closer and closer to the epicentre of the blast, drawn to the destruction like a thief towards his booty. I clambered in. The horror was unimaginable and indescribable. The awful stink of petrol and rubber and plastic and blood and metal and sulphur. Strange noises, straining and tearing, cracking violently in the blackest and inkiest darkness. A woman still sitting in her seat, her hand still gripping her bag, a foot in her lap and her head blown clean off her shoulders. Beyond her, a shallow pool of blood and intestines were boiling, actually boiling
. Another, I think it was a woman although there was no way of telling, lay screwed up in a corner, her limbs wrapped around her in a violent derangement and her body horribly twisted, snarled, crushed and tangled, with large chunks of flesh ripped out of her like massive bite marks…And then I saw something move. I turned and stooped and peered through the smoke. A little girl, no older than Emma. She was screaming, trapped beneath an entangled web of twisted metal and burning plastic. She was calling to me to help her. I didn’t think–I just moved towards her and grabbed her and pulled her, violently wrenching her free from the mangled scrap. I pulled her close into my arms and held her, safe and protected. She was tiny. I clambered back out of the bus, ambulances were arriving and the police were now everywhere. I made my way quickly back towards the retreating cordon of people. All of them were watching me–every eye in the crowd was on me, gawping at me–horrified, and amazed–their cameras and camcorders and mobile phones all aimed at me, filming me, as I made my way out of the growling burning wreck, a little girl held close and safe in my arms, both of us, still, miraculously, alive.
And now they can’t stop showing it–over and over they keep on playing it. It’s good footage. Natasha Kaplinsky called me The Hero of Bus 38. Alastair Stewart repeated it and then so did Katie Derham. They all want to know who the hero of bus 38 is. After my amateur heroics I didn’t stick around to sign any autographs, I just left the girl with a medic, took a blanket and disappeared into the crowd. I quietly shuffled off without giving any interviews.
And it was a hellishly long plod home, I can tell you. All the way from Victoria to Hackney–it’s a bloody long way. Wrapped in a blanket, bleeding and aching, only hours left to live, one step in front of the other, nothing to do but reflect…and plod on, and plod on, slowly, backwards over it all, forward to the end…I got in, made a cup of the Earl and collapsed with a jazz in front of the telly.
Every channel is giddy with it–continual terror updates, eye witness reports, live footage, breaking news–they can’t contain themselves. There have been four bombs in all, this time all on buses. The classic burning cross spread out over London once again. Euston, Victoria, Ladbroke Grove and Old Street. From the north to the south, the east to the west, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen. Allahu akbar. The death toll stands at twenty-eight. Many more wounded…And there I am again–they just can’t stop playing it–it is good footage, clear, in focus, broadcast-quality stuff, caught from every angle–me entering the burning bus, bloody and bare-chested like Rambo, and then emerging moments later with a little girl held close and safe in my arms. The life-saving heroics of the insanely brave–and nobody knows who he is–The Hero of Bus 38. Or the guilty man that God forgot.
The time is east…The end is nigh.
SUNDAY
Perhaps I shouldn’t have listened–certainly not obeyed. But that’s all with hindsight and easy to say now. I’m yielding by nature and giving in is easy. I’m not looking for forgiveness or trying to make excuses, but when I think of how it all began and where we are now–and all that’s gone on in between…Well, yes, I have to concede, a man of evil conscience cannot act well, and taking up my pen was a very naughty and very silly thing to do. Yes, that was my first sin…But what of it, so long as the sun goes on setting and so long as there’s someone around to take its picture, well, we can all live happily with that…But I digress, deviating from my course yet again–oh yes, I’m a deviant all right, meandering away from my plan, my grand idea. I must stay on track and see it through, stop this skirting and get on with it–time is short and I’m dodging, I must get on and complete. These last few jumbled recollections will have to suffice and conclude. I’ve tried to be honest and plain, I’ve done my best, but what remains, scribbled here, is really nothing very much at all, there is immeasurably more inside. I shall rewind, and for one last time recall. A little jazz to help me on my way…
His first words to me this morning, before I’d even opened my eyes, were: ‘Today, I am going to kill you.’
And he wasn’t joking–and now there’s no avoiding it–the outcome, that is, not the action. But I’m getting ahead of myself and you’ll hardly understand…The morning’s rituals unfolded routinely. I woke, as usual, in a shocking condition–something approaching a jittering gimp. My body black and broken, filthy with sweat and as stiff as sugared toffee. My limbs weary and aching, my skin creeping and my mind clattering with jumbled, frenzied thoughts, all of them feverishly at odds. I sat up and shook myself and shivered, and then pulled and stretched myself into some sort of working order, and then hobbled awkwardly over to the mirror and, bleary-eyed, peered in. What a pained disfigured wretch appeared–still guilty and afraid, but now more so, and worse…My face and shoulders lacerated with a thousand tiny cuts–like some garish tribal tattoo, marking my disgrace–a dark dense multitude of little lines exploding outwards over my features, incised into my skin. Horrible and beautiful…I admired myself and then felt mournful, looked at the floor, and thought of breakfast.
‘It’s just a day like any other,’ he muttered, rasping, as we eased our way awkwardly down the corridor and into the kitchen. I made some toast and tea, and then sat down and sipped and chewed and forced myself to swallow until I’d had my fill…And then I remember he momentarily left me, and went and sat by himself on the green chair by the door and did one of his drawings. A self-portrait. I remember the shadows at the edges, and in between objects and in corners, held my attention, misty and obscure–and I remember an emptiness filled me, and the muted unprepossessing dullness of nothing pushed darkly inward. It was a sort of freedom…But it didn’t last long.
The television burbled, zealously regurgitating yesterday’s terror.
‘This story’ll play for weeks,’ he said. ‘They’ll milk it for all it’s worth–nothing else’ll have a look-in now. You’d have to rape the Queen to break these headlines. Your antics are small fry compared to this. You might as well not have bothered.’
I ignored him. He’s going to be at me all day, I thought.
‘Yes,’ he said, barking at the wall, ‘I am.’ His tone was adamant.
The death toll has risen to 102.
‘By the end of today that’ll be at least 103,’ he sneered and then facetiously added, ‘Maybe that’ll be tomorrow’s headline–Hero of Bus 38 Found Dead in Basement Flat.’ And then he sniggered like a dirty baboon–tormenting me, even at this late stage, his nostrils flaring and his hairs vibrating…I remember there was something about the sight of him in that moment that really sickened me, and I remember he felt it in my expression, and I remember thinking: I did that…It was a very strange and uncomfortable moment. Neither of us knew where to look. I remember taking note of it and thinking I must write this down–it seemed like a very big and important thing at the time–righteous even. But now, having written it down, it just seems silly and vapid and nothing very much at all…Anyway, he lit a cigarette and watched it burn. The little girl I saved has been scrubbed and polished and reunited with her father. Her name is Sienna. The right side of her face is tattooed with the same dark scratchings as mine. We are of the same tribe. Katie Razzall from Channel 4 news asked her if she had a message for the man that saved her. She said she wanted to say thank you and hoped I would come and have tea with them at their house soon. He said we should have kept her. I ignored him, and turned the television off. We sat for a moment in silence, listening to the hush fizzle through the room and then slowly ebb away into quiet. And then he got up and looked at me.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s crumble on…’
I followed him into the kitchen and watched as he put the butter and the marmalade and the milk back into the fridge and then put the sugar back on the shelf. His actions were mechanical and unthinking. He emptied the half-chewed remains of my breakfast into the bin and then washed and rinsed my cup and plate, my knife and spoon, and dried them all and put them away. Then he wet a cloth and wiped the surfaces, gathering crumbs into his left p
alm. He rinsed his hands beneath the tap and then rinsed the cloth, tightly squeezing and re-squeezing it, enjoying its wetness and dribbling cold sogginess. Then he folded the cloth into a neat rectangle and draped it daintily over the tap. Then he dried his hands on the tea towel and then folded that into a neat rectangle and draped it over the oven. Then he looked at everything, and remembered it all…the stained grey sink and drainer, those broken tiles, that large pot of oversized utensils too big for the drawer, the small pot of wooden spoons–characterfully stained a rich reddy brown–the salt and pepper–oily and clogged–that crack in the surface full of filth impossible to remove, a bottle of Tesco’s Finest olive oil, aspirant, new and unopened. That odd collection of jugs bought in market towns on weekends away, never to be used. My old Baby Belling. The toaster and kettle–a set from the Hannai lifestyle range from Woolworths. My fridge. The bin, and the table I painted green to match the chair by the door beneath the light switch, too often fingered, and that bowl full of things and bits, and the clock, and that postcard of the Marx brothers prancing. He looked at it all. And remembered it all. And then he shuffled out, and into the front room…