by David Jester
He was tired, his brain running on a slow gear, but he dragged himself up, showered, changed, and then texted Darren and Eddie, telling them to meet him around the corner in an hour. He had some business to attend to first.
He paused by his front door and felt his heart skip a beat. He could see the lazy figure of Bobby “Biffa” Turner loitering near the block of flats opposite; close enough to see, close enough to smell.
Bobby got his nickname from the waste removal company, the ones whose name was emblazoned on every dumpster in the area. He’d had the nickname for most of his adult life, ever since he matured from a problem child into a nuisance teenager. Bobby himself would have you believe that the nickname came from his stout build, the way his shoulders seemingly rose past his neck and gave his figure a square appearance, like he had spent his adolescence jammed in a vice, but the nickname was twofold; the second reason being that Bobby Turner stank like he’d been soaking his clothes in the local sewer.
Malcolm sneered inwardly and then deflated when Bobby turned around and peered at him, flashing him a black-toothed smile.
Malcolm hated Bobby, and not just because of the way he smelled. Bobby was a loudmouthed prick, a man who couldn’t keep himself to himself. He liked to stick his nose in other peoples’ business because he had none of his own. He was a penniless, jobless, friendless forty-something with no aspirations, no ambitions, and no experiences. He saw the world as a soap opera and didn’t understand enough about social etiquette to know that no one liked him.
Malcolm hated him at the best of times, but now he was tired and his tiredness was making him bitter and cynical. He had never hated Bobby more, but he still had to maintain some level of pleasantness around him.
Malcolm stepped out of his house and locked the door behind him. “Hey Biffa, how’s things?” he said, as amicably as he could.
“You know, same old, same old.”
Malcolm nodded, thinking that same old, same old for Biffa meant peeping through windows to watch lonely women undress, queuing behind teenage girls just so he could get close enough to “accidentally” brush against their backsides, smoking fag-ends found on the street, and masturbating to lingerie catalogues until his cock grew callouses.
He took an instinctive step back when the smell of rotten garbage hit him. He tried not to twist up his face, tried not to grimace, but he couldn’t stop himself. After an initial look of revulsion, which seemed to go unnoticed, he struggled his way towards a friendly smile.
“Say, Malcolm.” Biffa took a few steps towards him and Malcolm knew what was coming: the town gossip needed new information. “I haven’t seen your mother around for a while, she’s okay, I hope?”
Malcolm looked back towards the house, “Fine. Mum’s been a little sick, that’s all.”
Biffa nodded slowly, his eyes on the floor, his grubby hands inside his pockets.
Malcolm made a move to leave, but Biffa stopped him with more questions. “I haven’t seen her leaving the house at all, not for a long time. She was quite active, your mum.”
Malcolm nodded, hoping to think up a lie on the spot. He wanted to tell Biffa to get lost and mind his own business, but he needed people like him on his side. He didn’t want the street to know he was living alone. Many of them didn’t like him and would grass him up in a heartbeat, even the ones who liked him would mouth off just for something to do.
“She’s got a new fella,” he said. “She spends a lot of time away, usually leaves at night or gets back early in the morning.” He knew that Biffa was rarely out in the small hours, he had a face fit for darkness but he liked to show it in the light.
“Oh, okay.” He smiled and stepped back, allowing Malcolm to pass now that his inspection was over.
Malcolm smiled at him as he left but he grumbled under his breath as soon as the smelly gossiper was out of earshot. He hated keeping such a low profile around his own house, hated having to watch what he said or did around his neighbors. He knew that the sooner he moved out, the better. He would be away from the miscreants that populated the neighborhood, away from freaks like Biffa, and the assholes that kept him awake at night. He would get his own place; he would get enough money to give a landlord six months in advance and he’d be set. He just needed one big score and, if Eddie had his facts right, if his insane uncle was right, then the clinic could be just the ticket.
7
“How much was it?” Eddie’s mother asked when he handed her back her credit card.
“It?”
“The album you said you were downloading.”
“Ah,” he waved a dismissive hand at her. “I didn’t get it in the end.”
She grinned and seemed relieved. She had given him the card last night; as usual she had a hard time refusing him anything. Money was still good, but it was getting tighter. They were trying to book a holiday, trying to cover the cost of the new computer that Eddie had bought a few weeks ago and trying to buy a new car. The album hadn’t been much, but the thought that she’d saved just that little bit brought a smile to her face.
“I got some speakers instead,” he told her.
The smile dripped from her face. She opened her mouth, looked momentarily angry and then closed it again. She composed herself before asking, “How much?”
“Three hundred,” he said bluntly, watching as his mother visibly deflated. “I bought a new sub to go with them. Oh,” he paused and scratched his chin, “make that four hundred. They had an offer on sound cards so I got a top-of-the-range one.”
His mother sunk her head into her chest and stared absently at her card as her son grinned above her. A series of thoughts ran through her head, followed by an emotion that she rarely expressed in front of him.
“Is that okay?” Eddie asked.
She looked up at him and he saw something flare behind her eyes, he thought, for a moment, that he had pushed her too far.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” she said, tucking the card into her pocket. “Whatever you want.”
He felt his phone buzz in his pocket and saw a message come through from Malcolm when he pulled it out. “Well, I gotta go,” he told his despondent mother.
“When will you be back?” she asked as he walked towards the front door.
He turned, stared at her, shrugged, and then left without saying a word.
Darren stood and stared, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
He didn’t know where his mother was. He had been up for ten minutes or so and, after emptying his bladder in the upstairs toilet, he’d gone straight downstairs to make himself a drink. He liked to spend some time in front of the television when he woke, watching whatever mind-numbing entertainment he could find. He preferred not to be interrupted, so he should have been happy when he popped his head into the living room and saw that his mother wasn’t there. But he wasn’t happy, because Ian, her foul-breathed prick of a boyfriend, was there in her place.
He was slouched on the sofa, the top of his head facing Darren’s disgusted stare. Ian had his hand stuffed down his tracksuit bottoms—a rank and aged pair of pants so thick with dirt and bacteria they had probably fused onto his hairy legs—and Darren could see the rapid movement of his clenched fist beneath the dirty material, as his wannabe stepfather pleasured himself to an early morning chat show, where a bubbly, middle-aged woman with rosy cheeks and an annoying voice was currently talking to other, equally annoying, women.
“You fucking disgust me,” Darren said abruptly.
Ian stopped. He pulled his hand out of his pants and sat sharply upright. He looked at Darren in bewilderment at first, as if he had forgotten that he lived there, then his expression turned to anger. “What the fuck are you doing, you little pervert?” he spat.
“I’m the pervert?” Darren said, bemused. “I ain’t the one wanking to The View. What the fuck is wrong with you? Is Sesame Street not on this morning?”
Ian stood up quickly and glared angrily at Darren. He was skinny with a body that seemed breakable
, fragile, but what he lacked in muscle he made up for in stature and confidence. He thought he was a hard man, thought he could take on the world, and he didn’t have any issues trying to do just that. He shuffled up to Darren, moved his face close enough for Darren to smell the stale booze and cigarettes on his breath and his clothes.
“Don’t think I won’t hit you jus’ coz I’m fucking yer mother,” he said softly.
Darren gave a twisted grimace and pulled away.
“You not like that, eh?” Ian said. He lifted his hand, extended a finger, and made to prod Darren on the shoulder. Darren edged quickly away.
“Don’t touch me with that fucking hand,” he said, staring at it like the diseased limb it was. “I know where it’s been.”
That was enough to burn Ian’s short fuse, enough to fuel the fire behind his eyes. Darren saw him growl; saw the vein on his forehead throb and the expression in his eyes turn wild. He didn’t see the punch until it was too late. Ian’s fist caught him across the temple and sent him clattering into the doorway where he rebounded, his hand now on his head, in front of his attacker. Ian hit him again and again, until he was on the floor, holding up his hands to protect his face.
Ian left him there. When Darren finally removed his hands, he saw the world through a spinning, hazy vision; he saw that Ian was grinning at him. They locked stares for a moment and then Ian returned to the sofa, his hand back down his pants.
Darren lay on the floor until his cell phone alerted him to a new message. He cleaned himself up, showered, and then left, loitering near the living room first, contemplating storming inside and attacking Ian, but not finding the confidence to do it.
8
Malcolm stood before the desk with a smile on his face. All around him the scuttling, yapping noise of a dozen animals filled his ears; the scents of sawdust, food, and ammonia filled his nostrils and pleased his brain. There was something so strangely comforting about it, the nostalgia more than anything else. He enjoyed the smell of stale cigarettes because it reminded him of his early school days, sneaking around the back of the bike sheds to smoke a few with his friends; he enjoyed the smell of tomato soup because it reminded him of one of the few times his mother had been a mother to him, when they had spent most of the day brewing up a large batch, sipping mouthfuls and filling up so that when the soup was finally cooked, they didn’t eat a drop; and he liked the smell of sawdust and the sound of scuttling because he loved the things that scuttled and the things that used sawdust as bedding: the mice, the hamsters, the gerbils, the guinea pigs, the rabbits. They didn’t remind him of his childhood, he had never been allowed a pet, but they reminded him of the countless hours he had spent with animals to forget about his life, to forget about the misery that filled it.
“Hey Mal, what’s up?”
Malcolm was grinning when Patchouli showed up, he grinned even more when he saw her. She was a good ten years older than him, but she had a soft, sweet smile and a young, beautiful face that belied her age. She could easily pass for seventeen or eighteen, the same age as Malcolm. She was a hippy, wore an armful of bangles and a neck full of pendants, amulets, and strange trinkets on leather bands. She always dressed in clothes that looked homemade and she always smelt of incense. Many times, he wondered if she smoked dope and if she would join him for a joint or two, but he had never had the confidence to ask.
“Hey Petti,” he said softly. “Just dropping in to say, well, that I won’t be dropping in today.” He grinned, he always felt awkward around her, and not just because he was always trying to hide his true nature—trying to come across as someone prim and proper, someone law-abiding.
“Oh,” she looked disappointed, he liked that. “Any reason why? If you don’t mind me asking.”
He shrugged, “I have a lot of studying to do, you know how it is.”
She nodded, suggesting she did, though he certainly didn’t know how it was. He had never studied. He had skated through school, winging it all the way, right up until his exams when, inevitably, he struggled to complete the work. He couldn’t tell her the real reasons though, he couldn’t tell her that he wouldn’t be available to volunteer because he needed to have a look at a rehab clinic outside of town, and he definitely couldn’t tell her why.
“I’ll be in next week though,” he said.
She smiled at him, a smile that, as always, came close to melting his heart.
He had been volunteering at the shelter for a few years. They took in abused, neglected, and abandoned animals. It was a small operation run by Petti’s mother and father, two aging hippies who adored animals. It catered to all sorts, from mice and hamsters to cats and dogs.
He used to drop in as a kid, back when Petti was just a teenager. He went on his own and would often stare forlornly at the animals, hoping that he could adopt one of them himself. When he wasn’t staring at them he was staring at Petti. She had matured since then and gotten better with age, but she had still been very pretty. He had also matured; he was nothing like the lost little kid who used to stroke the rabbits through the cages or feed treats to the dogs. Petti didn’t recognize him, didn’t know that the teenager who came in as often as he could to feed, clean, and care for the animals, was the same kid who had treated her parents’ shelter like a second home.
He’d always had a thing for animals, and mostly preferred them to humans. They were innocent, helpless, and could be very loving. They had all the good traits of humankind and only a few of the bad. They didn’t kill without purpose and didn’t abuse. They weren’t sociopathic, sadistic, or malicious. Humans used their sadism against animals; they tortured them, hurt them, and killed them for no purpose other than their own entertainment. In the wild a cat might toy with a mouse for sport, but a rabbit would never hurt anything; a dog would protect its owner to the death and greet everyone else as if they were the friendly, loving people they should be.
Humans are top of the food chain, the pinnacle of evolution, but only at the top, only with the greatest power, can the vilest atrocities be committed. Malcolm knew he wasn’t the perfect human, far from it, he went into peoples’ houses at night and stole from them, no doubt scarring them for life, but he felt like he had no other choice and was doing what he could to get by with the least amount of suffering to others.
Malcolm said his goodbyes to the animals and to Petti and he waited for Darren and Eddie on the corner, out of sight of the animal shelter. They didn’t know he volunteered there and he didn’t plan on telling them. He had a persona to maintain. He was the strong one, the one who didn’t care about anyone or anything. That was the way he wanted it, the way it needed to be.
9
They took the bus out of the city and watched through the smeared windows as the assortment of derelict villages and towns merged into one drab, gray landscape. Malcolm and Darren stared absently out of the window, their minds elsewhere, but Eddie was more interested in what was inside the bus.
The bus was empty when they got on, choosing the seats at the back, but on the next stop they were joined by a pretty brunette. She was in her early twenties with dark Persian skin and thick black hair that she kept flicking over her ears. She gave the boys a friendly smile when she saw them staring.
“She’s fucking gorgeous,” Eddie noted when the woman sat down.
The others agreed, though they weren’t keen on doing anything about it; Eddie seemed infatuated by her.
The fact that she had headphones in her ears and a magazine in her lap suggested that she didn’t want to be disturbed, but Eddie had other ideas. “I saw the way she looked at me,” he said, his eyes beaming lustfully.
Malcolm pulled his attention away from the window to glare at his friend. “Really?” he said with raised eyebrows.
“You saw it. She had that cheeky, flirty smile that they all have.”
Darren turned to stare at Eddie, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’ve got some fucked-up shit going on inside that head of yours.”
“Wh
at?” Eddie snapped. “You didn’t see it?”
Darren and Malcolm shook their heads slowly. They had both seen her smile, but they hadn’t seen what Eddie saw, or thought he saw.
“Then fuck you,” Eddie said, turning back to the girl, staring at the back of her head, admiring the way the gloss of her lustrous hair reflected the sunshine that struggled through the grimy windows. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m gonna go over there and talk to her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Fuck you. It’s a great idea.”
Eddie stood up, steadied himself on the rail, patted down his jacket and then swaggered over.
“That kid has no shame,” Darren said.
Malcolm nodded, hearing a touch of trepidation in Darren’s voice and feeling the same way. Eddie hadn’t always been like that. He used to be shy and distant.
“You think he was being serious?” Darren pushed.
They saw Eddie grin as he chatted to her. She turned her head towards him and they could see the meek and unimpressed smile on her face, a smile that suggested she wanted the crazy kid above her to get away as quickly as possible.
“About the way she looked at him?” Malcolm asked, watching his friend.
“Yeah.”
“I hope not.”
Darren nodded. He watched as Eddie’s smile turned into a frown, watched as his confident stance shifted into an upright stance of intimidation. The woman turned away and plugged her headphones back in.
“Ah, shit,” Darren said, just before Eddie kicked off.
“Fuck you, bitch,” Eddie rasped, scowling at the woman who pretended she couldn’t hear him. “I ain’t into fucking dykes anyway!”
He turned around angrily, stormed back to his seat and slumped down next to his friends who both awaited an explanation.