by A. J. Reid
A Smaller Hell
By A. J. Reid
A SMALLER HELL
Copyright: A. J. Reid
Published: 9th November 2012
Publisher: A. J. Reid
Kindle Edition
The right of A. J. Reid to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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The author would like to thank John and Deborah Reid for their love and support.
Table of Contents
Absolution
Neon and Blood
Ghost Streets
Pipe Smoker
Fly in the Ointment
Venetian Tombstone
The Wolves
Strawberry
Fly Away, Pigeon
Hideout
Sabre
Fresh Bread
Lay Away
The Tunnels
Butcher
Toys
Mountain
Here Comes the Bride
Porcelain
Red Light
Boiled Cupid
It’s Rude To Point
Let It Snow
Detention
Artery
Shaky Jake’s
Crew Only
Taboos
Hell’s Grotto
Umbrella
Joyride
Spine
Stuffed
Tomato
All Ye Faithful
Christmas Bonus
Descent
Beati Mundo Corde
The Red Door
Star of Bethlehem
Statues
Fireflies
Christmas Day
I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom. – Thomas Carlyle
Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. – Unknown
Absolution
When I became a fugitive from the law, I was already on the run from myself: numbed by the clockwork of my routine, haunted by the greyness of my work and embarrassed by the Technicolor dreams of my youth.
I saw no future beyond the monoxide rattle of the bus every morning and the smell of freshly scrubbed commuters all set to be sullied by the day ahead of them. They spent a fortune on creams, gels, waxes and muds to promote their chances of successful reproduction and keeping the buses full for another generation. For those who hadn’t yet reproduced, low-lit wine bars and sweaty, pulsating nightclubs remained their churches; and toilet cubicles, their confession booths. Their absolution rituals seemed to work for them, so I bought some hair mud and began joining them on Friday nights out.
The ensuing months were all about drinking too much, suffering endless conversations about reality television and fending off the ape-men who coped with their existential angst by bottling, gouging and stamping any co-existent primates who happened to spill their pint. My loneliness was becoming unbearable and I was envious, because my friends seemed happier in their debauchery than ever.
Before accepting that I was doomed to the status of gloomy onlooker, my last-ditch effort was a seventies fancy dress night. I remember staring in the bathroom mirror at the wig and sunglasses I was wearing, promising that this would be the last time I put myself through it all.
No-one could have predicted what followed, courtesy of my new employer: Dianne Doyle, purveyor of Technicolor nightmares.
Neon and Blood
Revellers lumbered past us like cattle while the high-vis shepherds hovered, waiting to round up stragglers. My companion ran her fingers across my jumpsuit’s white fabric and tapped her nails on the gold medallion until she was dragged away by her cackling friends into the November mist. I shrugged, adjusted my jumpsuit for the walk to the taxi rank and set off into the night.
The cold breeze swept me along with the rest of the leaves in the neon, sodium and xenon river, staring into their phones as they zigzagged homeward. I ran my hand down the front of my thigh looking for mine, forgetting for a moment that the jumpsuit had no pockets, forcing me to leave it at home.
It was to be another taxi home alone.
Suddenly, I was shoved from behind. I turned around to see a guy in an apron, glaring at me from beneath a Neanderthal brow. His hair was thatched and his complexion was like a potato sack, sallow but tough.
‘Go and clean that off,’ he said, pointing at a white burger van parked about fifty yards back.
‘What?’
I parted my afro wig and squinted at the van through the mist. I could make out the words clean me written on its rear doors in the dirt.
‘I didn't write ...’
Before I could finish my sentence, there was a white flash, ringing in my ears and blood in my mouth. The familiar squeak and crunch of fragments of teeth sent my adrenal glands into incontinence, flooding my veins with fighting juice.
I stepped back and moved round to the left to try to get an angle on him for a left hook, but he moved more quickly than I expected. My jab was countered with a right cross to my eye, which immediately became warm and wet with blood. I tried the fastest flurry I could muster, causing him to step back and trip over a raised paving slab. I sent him down with a left hook but he was strong, coming back at me with a body blow that cracked my ribs. I gasped at the sharp pain in my side and drove down a fist into his solar plexus, using my weight to make it count. As he expelled a lungful of smoky coffee breath into my face, gloved hands grabbed me from above. It was only now that I noticed the slow blue strobe pulsing up the tall, stern concrete of the surrounding buildings and the hi-vis luminous jackets busying around my opponent. They helped him to his feet and began walking him back to his van.
I stepped away from the police and they responded by stalking closer to me while reaching down for their CS sprays and their truncheons.
‘Why isn't he being arrested?’ I asked, as the officers tended to Burger Man, bending down to speak to him and even fetching him water.
‘You’re under arrest. Come with us to the station and we can talk about it.’
‘That man assaulted me for no reason. I had every right to defend myself,’ I said.
‘He has a business to run.’
The other policeman shook his head.
Without missing a beat, the younger policeman tried to restrain me in an arm-lock, but I wriggled free and managed to dump him on the ground, only to be gassed by the other. My eyes clouded up, stinging as if someone had rubbed nettle leaves on my eyeballs. My breath caught in my lungs and I staggered into the clutches of his backup. I flipped and flopped about on the deck, only to be hoisted up by each limb. They aimed my legs for the open doors of the riot van, but I splayed them at the last minute, one platform boot on either side of the doors to the amusement of a small audience, who were pointing and laughing. Eventually, they got me in the van with several steaming, gasping officers following in after me. The bustle of the crowd, thumping bass from the clubs and the neon glow from their signs all vanished into blackness as the riot van doors were slammed shut.
&
nbsp; We sailed the seas of neon and blood, parting them as it made its voyage to the bridewell. Everyone in the van was silent and the policeman I had floored in the melee continued to stare me out.
‘Bet you thought you had an easy collar there … Before I put you on your arse.’
‘What?’ he snapped, pulling his CS canister from its holster.
‘First day on the job?’
‘Shut up … Or I’ll shut you up.’
‘Take the cuffs off and try it.’
The older policemen laughed, while the red-faced rookie held up his CS canister to my eyes.
‘Please use in ventilated areas only,’ I read from the label on the can.
‘I'll ventilate your fucking head,’ he said.
‘Big talk, but I don’t see you doing anything.’
The sergeant turned round in his front seat, laughing. ‘Sounds like you've got your hands full there, Chapman.’
Chapman launched a punch at me and my head snapped back into the mesh of the cage, cutting my scalp. Surging forward, I aimed a head-butt at him, but his colleague took the brunt of it on his forearm.
The sergeant ordered the driver to pull over.
There was a fury of hi-vis yellow, heads, elbows and knees before I found myself dragged out and dumped on my back on the cold, wet tarmac underneath a scrapyard sign. A rusty colossus made of twisted car doors and mauled engines loomed over us, watching silently. I spat some blood on the tarmac and hurled myself in Chapman's direction, but was thwarted again by one of his colleagues.
The sergeant marched towards me, poking his baton in my direction.
‘Name.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Well, we'll go with Fuck All for now,’ he growled, wedging the baton into my larynx. ‘Come on, son.’
The sergeant led me into the scrapyard by my cuffed arms, like a gladiator being led into the arena. Instead of cheering crowds, there were groaning towers of rusted steel; instead of blood and severed limbs in the dry Roman earth, there were ripped out exhausts and broken glass in the cold British mud. The sergeant stuck one of his gloved fingers in Chapman's face and barked into his ear. Chapman nodded and the rip of Velcro echoed around the deserted yard as he removed his identity tags.
The sergeant took his time striding back over to me.
‘Ready, Fuck All?’ he asked, unlocking my cuffs.
‘This is a joke, right?’
I rubbed my wrists where the cuffs had been and ran my fingers over my scalp wounds, which had clotted in the icy November wind. A small tunnel between two huge stacks of scrap presented itself as I was frog marched through the yard by Chapman and the sergeant. Was there still time to make a break for it? Would they risk chasing me through there? I broke away, sending the sergeant to the ground and making Chapman swing for me, limiting my options to strike or be struck.
I stepped left and into him, avoiding his lumbering right hand and connecting a counterpunch with his jaw. Clutching at my bloodied, muddied jumpsuit, I fell to my knees with the pain in my ribcage. Chapman lay in the cold mud, shuddering violently, his eyes rolled back in their sockets.
The sergeant's shocked face and the convergence of torch beams upon Chapman's still body were the last things I saw before throwing myself headlong into the deadly crawlspace through the scrap and out into the labyrinth of the docks.
Ghost Streets
When I stopped running, the steam was curling off the shoulders of the jumpsuit and my ankles felt as if they were going to break in the platform heels. I’d run through the maze of tyre-fitting garages, car washes and derelict pubs until I made it to the cobbled streets and old terraced housing. In the mist, all the roads looked identical, so I picked one called March Avenue.
Every window that I passed was either smashed or boarded up and the only sounds were of cats fighting in the alleys that ran between some of the houses. The street smelled musty and there was green slime on some of the cobbles as if no-one had walked or driven through there for a while. No TVs chattering in the front rooms and no smoke coming from any of the Victorian chimneys. I ducked down one of the alleys as I heard voices and footsteps a few streets over and found that I was able to open a door to one of the yards that wasn’t too overgrown with weeds. I pushed through the jungle, past a rusty bike and a smashed up fridge, until I came to a window looking into a kitchen with plates still piled high on the sink.
Something ran over my foot as I ducked underneath the door hanging off its hinges. It moved through the weeds until it reached the corner of the yard and began hissing. Amongst the dead telephone wires and rotting trainers suspended from them, a few lights still buzzed in the street, filling the house with long shadows and oblongs of amber light. The sink stank too much of rotten food to stay in the kitchen for long, so I moved into the hallway, past the steep and narrow staircase.
‘Hello?’ I called into the darkness.
Nobody answered, so I proceeded into the parlour, where there was an old-fashioned fireplace. The windows were boarded up, allowing only streaks of amber light through, so I climbed the fragile staircase to see if I could find clothes, towels or blankets to cover my shivering body. I struck gold atop one of the wardrobes in the main bedroom when I found a down-filled ‘90s puffer jacket and in it, a lighter that still worked. The jacket was too big and had a hood that zipped up halfway over my face, but it was warm and stopped my hands trembling when I dug them deep into the pockets.
Holding the lighter aloft, I searched for anything that could be used for firewood. A bamboo cabinet in the bathroom proved easy to break up and carry back downstairs to the fireplace, but difficult to keep lit. By the light of the small flames, I could see that behind the door there was a coal bucket from which I plucked the last few black nuggets. Once these were lit, I smashed up a table for more firewood, gathered some old bedding from under the stairs and lay down next to the hearth. With one of the sturdy table legs propped up against the door handle and another within easy reach, I tried to get some sleep.
The next morning, I took a bus back to my flat, my puffer jacket’s hood still drawn halfway up over my face, as it had been all night. When I stepped off the bus and into the rain, I could see two people at the front door of the house and a police car parked on the driveway. Waiting in the bus shelter, it was impossible to hear what they were saying because the traffic and the rain hammering on the plastic roof, but I recognised the sergeant with the moustache from the night before. He was talking to my landlord, who shrugged and shook his head a lot. The sergeant scribbled on his notepad anyway and handed my landlord a card.
Just as he was getting back in the police car, the next bus arrived, saving me the indignity of any more running in those platform heels. I rode it out of town, disembarking at a village full of charity shops and tea houses to find some new clothes. Everything creaked in this village, from the sign swinging above the post office to the old dears staffing the shops.
In the first shop I entered, the lady seemed startled when the bell above the door rang, as if I was her first ever customer. I unzipped my jacket and began rifling through the racks of men’s’ clothing, remembering just how cold it had been in the parlour overnight, even with a fire.
‘Anything in particular you’re after, dear?’ she asked.
‘Something warm: it’s freezing out there. Some shoes, too,’ I said, looking down at my platform boots.
‘You go and stand by the fire, love,’ she said, pointing to the electric oil heater by the till. ‘I’ll sort it out.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, hovering my blue hands over the hot metal grille.
She came back with a real Royal Navy reefer jacket, a scarf, hat, gloves, jeans … the works. On top of the neatly folded pile of clothes she placed a pair of Adidas three-stripe trainers that looked as if they’d never been worn.
‘I don’t have that much money,’ I said.
‘Go and try them on. If they fit, we’ll work something out.’
I wandered over
to the changing room, clutching the pile of clothes as the lady tidied up around the shop. Everything fit and felt warm. I took the money out of my puffer jacket and transferred it to the reefer before walking back over to the till.
‘Leave the platform boots and the jump suit and you can have that stuff for nothing,’ the old lady said.
‘I’ll be back one day when I’m rich,’ I said.
‘Heard that one before,’ she replied. ‘You keep warm and come back if you need anything else.’
‘Thank you,’ I said and dinged out of the door, back into the rain.
I pulled my scarf tighter and walked the length of the village, stopping at a few other little shops to pick up essentials before coming to a cash machine. I looked up and down the street before inserting my card to withdraw the remaining money I had left. The machine clanked angrily and flashed a message on its screen:
Card confiscated.
Contact your nearest branch immediately.
A woman with crows’ feet in her Botox lined up behind me, rustling a huge paper bag with Tanner’s written on it in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. Her Chanel perfume wafted past me as she dropped the keys to her Mercedes and crouched down to recover them. As she did so, she lost her Jackie Onassis sunglasses, which I picked up for her. She snatched them away from me and continued with her phone call, leaving me to panic over my swallowed card, my severed lifeline. I pushed every button on the panel, but nothing came up on the screen except a request to insert another card.
‘Are you going to be much longer?’ she sighed from behind me. ‘Some of us have places to be.’
‘Spa day, is it?’ I replied, mashing the buttons with my fist.
‘I have a hair appointment at Andrew Bollinger,’ she said, applying yet more lipstick to her cruel, puckered mouth. ‘With Andrew Bollinger.’
‘Are you this rude to him?’
‘Oh, just get out of my way: I haven’t time for this,’ she said, pushing me aside. As she did so, her sunglasses fell to the floor again, this time crunching under my new trainers like a giant beetle as I stepped back from the machine.