by J.W. Carey
I move on, passing through the always open gate that promises security and never delivers, past the empty guardhouse, past the row of cars parked at odd angles in their rectangular squares. The road is awake, already taxi drivers are stacking up like desperate penitents outside the station; already the suits are pacing from nearby car park to the station, each one clutching some variation of the same briefcase, the same handbag. I join their steady procession, pretending to be unaware of the space left around me. They brushed up against each other’s shoulders in their effort to avoid me, their crisp and clean presentation ill-fitting with the uncombed hair, patchy stubble and creased clothing which I assumed was my appearance. I didn’t know, of course, I hadn’t seen myself that day.
I made that my mission, to seek out every reflective surface, every blacked-out window; every glint in a passing vehicle’s windscreen. I caught glimpses, of course, hurried flashes of myself, but nothing concrete, nothing towards which I could direct my gaze with any intensity. I would catch a black t-shirt, one I knew carried the design of some band or other, peeking out from beneath a red buttoned shirt undone to the sternum. I caught grey jeans, a dull, colourless affair, and a hoodie beneath a jacket. All these things I could see, of course, merely by looking down, but I found that the attempt at such a motion encouraged pain to stab into the musculature of my neck. I relied on those fleeting images to define who I was in that short walk stretched over eternity. My shirt was the only flash of colour amongst the grey and black and white crowd, my boots acting as a punctuation mark amongst the lexis of the crowd’s steady tread.
The queue for the ticket office was obscenely long, and growing longer with every few seconds, suits gravitating towards them in a forced calm, one hiding a worthless desperation. I turned from the crowd there and made my way into one of the adjacent rooms, some newsagent disguised as a book store. The woman behind the register smiled at me, a pre-prepared courtesy, wrapped and packaged like the sandwiches in the cooler to her left. I replied in kind, a grin that faded before it began, but she seemed satisfied.
I found the aisle with the magazines and allowed myself the luxury of scanning them. Eyes forced into brilliance by computer software stared out at me, breasts enlarged and waists shrunk in front of idyllic looking landscapes, beautifully maintained gardens and the newest kitchen design. Above them squatted the male magazines, secreted away in black packaging that only covered the bottom half, still revealing supposedly sweat-soaked flesh, eyes made to beg like a dog and hair deliberately combed wild. Neither mattered really, but lifestyles had to be sold. Love had to be bastardised, bottled and sold. Emotion had to be trapped between glossy pages and sold. Existence and conformation of individuality had to, of course, be sold.
Pleased with that thought, I turned to the magazines devoted to the warping of young minds, of creating Gods from Men, and I saw little difference. Rock stars and wannabes all; old men shaving clean and pretending that they were still young, young men struggling to grow their first beards that they might pretend that they were old. Nobody was whom they desired to be, everybody was struggling against themselves to be something their nature discouraged. The ultimate act of rebellion, no doubt that was how the saw it; the red revolution against the authority of the self. Perhaps that was due, in part, to the fearful reasonability of the modern homo sapient. No Orwellian government rose, not one of Huxley’s nightmares ascended the steps of Downing Street, nothing so wholly obvious in its evil that it would be, unequivocally, the enemy of the man who would call himself free. With nothing of any meaning against which it could rail, the populace fought amongst itself and individuality, that untenable desire, was key!
I shook such thoughts from my head and moved on, arriving at the small selection of books on display, in the hopes of finding something new; some lost masterpiece forgotten by history. There was, of course, no such thing to be found in such a place, but I still wasted a few minutes inspecting dull romances with pink and purple covers, cheap fantasy with expensive looking covers and autobiographies advertised with empty, vacuous stares. There was nothing for me there either, so I left, ignoring the suspicious glare the woman gave me as I stepped through the door again.
The line had barely decreased, so I went into a small café opposite the terminal. The queue there was also long, filled with people talking loudly into Bluetooth headsets, having to increase their volume over everyone else and, in turn, forcing them to raise their own voice until the line was a screaming train, heading for the wreckage of the barista. I realised how accurate the well-documented phenomenon was, that women instantly became more attractive when they were the ones providing some kind of drug, coffee or alcohol or sugar. Her pale skin seemed to exude some unearthly light beneath the fluorescence, the darkness of her hair unable to stop it from shining out. The hair itself had been swept back into a ponytail at some point, but had begun to escape, several strands hanging down in front of her left eye.
The line moved quickly, more a result of her efficiency than any conscious effort on their part. The guy in front of me, white-shirt, black trousers, matching blazer over his arm, was screeching something or other about the price of a membership. I didn’t really listen. It wasn’t a world to which I could claim to belong and, anyway, the smell of coffee and a reasonably-priced breakfast was distracting me. He ordered his coffee quickly, almost as though the action was a major irritation. He had the attitude of someone completing a chore, as though this was a ritual to a God he had long since ceased to believe in but continued to perform, because his peers could not all be wrong.
I had a fleeting desire then; wishing that he had treated her like dirt, like she was below him in every knowable manner imaginable. I could have called him out, screamed at him like some Danish Warlord in the midst of a blood-frenzy, some foreign warrior drinking a concoction of mushrooms before a duel of such magnitude in the grand passage of history that we rolled in the dirt like beasts, like children at play. I could have stood as something of a modern-day hero in front of a barista and a crowd of people whose opinions I could not bring myself to either consider or value.
But he moved on and I ordered my breakfast, having no fake smile to offer her. She didn’t offer me one, for which I was tempted to thank her, instead simply turning away to prepare my drink. I ignored the twisting curve of her body as she poured the boiling water into the mug, ignored the sudden tilt of her neck as she lowered the tea bag in by its string; ignored the flick of her ponytail as she turned back to me. She placed the cup in the saucer on the counter before me and I briefly considered rifling through my pockets for change, simply to extend the time I could watch her. I would have done, had my hand not closed about a note before it hit the bottom of my pocket. I paid her and, alongside my change, she gave me a little flag with the number ‘07’ on it. I thanked her in a croaking voice, repeating it as I moved away. I waited for the man ahead of me to finish at the station before I moved there. I poured a little milk, added a little sugar and stirred it together with the second to last wooden mixer.
I took my seat in the corner by the door, a habit of mine I had no intention to shake. I plated my flag proudly on the edge of the cheap plastic; a Conquistador lost in brand new lands of humid jungle and temples of gold. My breakfast came quickly, delivered by some dead-eyed old woman with a suspicious lack of wrinkles. Her hair hadn’t greyed, at least visibly, but she had a face that suggested she had seen everyone and everything, that life had passed her by like trailers at a cinema but she’d only come to see the main event. She slapped the plate down and snatched the flag away, and I surrendered my newborn kingdom in place of guaranteed sustenance.
It was barely warm, and the butter beside it was thin and oily. I didn’t care. I smeared it across the surface and wolfed it down in a few quick bites, feeding like the animal I pretended not to be. I hadn’t realised exactly how hungry I had been until that moment, as though some alien spirit, unaware of the body’s need for fuel, had possessed me for a t
ime. I couldn’t actually remember the last thing I had eaten and my stomach growled, though whether in a complaint or a grateful acceptance I could not tell. I never learned to speak stomach.
My tea was equally unpleasant, but I could barely taste it over its warmth. I felt it move down my throat. Even had I lost it, I could have traced its passage by the spreading contentment in my limbs, the sudden numbness to rival that of any alcohol, of any slight overdose of painkillers stolen from a friend’s cupboard. I had an urge to remain there, to watch the world pass me by and find solace in the sight of a tired old woman and a barista. So I drained my tea in two mouthfuls and left for the ticket office.
Luke 19:10
There is such a romance to a train, don’t you think? Such an idealisation, one to rival even that of the honest miner, his hard-working hands ingrained with dust and dirt, as though simplicity were a byword for nobility. Something that, thanks to the ingenuity of man, can take you anywhere you would desire to go. As long, of course, as the destination you seek is in fact a replication of the same building, attached to replicated, metallic tracks, carved through natural glory.
To speed across land, in physical comfort and uncomfortable company, from one shore to the next, and back again, to join in the faceless mass of travellers, of commuters and pilgrims on some capitalist venture, is one of the greatest pleasures one can enjoy, right? The simple act of movement, in a world where you have little other reason to emerge from the house you would pretend is a home.
To see nature rushing to meet you, enjoying its moment’s worth of company before you are gone again, flying past it without looking back at its misery, like a puppy with whom you refuse to play. Surrounded by a collective of humanity, each one with their own irritating habits, each one with their own natural definition of insanity, each one unbearable in any period of time, though you are compressed into the same tight space as a thousand others have been. You sit where the dead have sat, you stand where the dying have stood. You breathe the air that criminals and monsters have expelled from their own lungs, all the while smiling at themselves, maintaining a cool distance from every other passenger.
How very romantic.
* * *
The two adults nominally in charge of this little prison-break, and obvious by the lack of the simple-minded idiocy which seemed to permeate the greater proportion of their charges, looked exactly like teacher’s should. Neither were particularly old, even by my, often radically, polarising evaluation of youth, and certainly no older than thirty.
The male, stopping at my shoulder to talk to the upstanding student beside me, wore a navy blue blazer (dual-buttoned, of course, but hanging loose) which, I must admit, did look quite smart. I had to stifle a groan, however, when I caught a glimpse of the parcel-brown, leather elbow-patches, given the appearance of being carefully hand stitched to the rich material with an esoteric and uneven hand, but almost certainly produced by some great soulless device, or some poor child whom had already begun the transformation into a similar machine. His shirt was as white as sin, and buttoned all the way up to the clean streak of his throat. A smartly formed tie, red as a Marxist Halloween costume, hung down as he bent his head to the student. A pair of simple cords (far too young for a pair of trousers, which is, no doubt, the kind of thing his father would’ve worn), held up by a braided brown leather belt, and hanging loose above a pair of scuffed, black-leather boots.
All in all, the perfect image of a tutor. The kind that said ‘Cool it, guys’ in a voice he practiced in the mirror, one which, he assured himself, was both authoritative and relaxed. And, besides a rough beard set below a pair of ‘stylishly’ thick glasses and hair carefully tousled from a pretended insomnia, a result of his hectically youthful lifestyle, that was it. That was a human being, the sum of, perhaps, twenty seven years of sights and sound, scent and touch and taste and thought.
Her approach, both geographically and psychologically, was similar to his. Her dress, no doubt part of that most recent revival of the irritatingly retro ‘alternative’ fashion trend, was closely cut and yet thick enough to avert the attention of her developing charges. A seemingly woollen material which clung to her, in supposedly gaudy colours of summer which, to be perfectly honest, gave off an aroma of fading joy on their own. It was their failing battle against the grey of the sky, the grey of the crowd and the grey of a Northern Rail train which trudged like the steady footsteps of a miner’s march.
The dead protein about her face, which hung to her jaw in a burnt shock of blonde dye, blended with the paleness of her overly made-up skin. Her eyebrows, black and trimmed, were out of place above her blue eyes, shiny from the over-application of mascara and the sickeningly artificial yellow light of the ceiling. Below the shifted mass of wool, her legs hid beneath a black material, either fresh-black tights or long-abused leggings. Either way, the white of her legs was plainly visible through the stretched material, a decision that I have no doubt she would spend the day regretting, judging by the way the young men’s eyes crept down the length of her body.
They were absolutely made for each other. I could see the cream coloured staff room, the coffee stained couches arranged around the small table, and the matching chairs tucked beneath surfaces stolen from an over-stocked classroom. I could see her passing him a drink, a ‘Frappuccino’ or something suitably ‘hip’ in stark contrast to the dull, grey tea drunk by their elders. He thanks her before she has even told him it was his, and reaches for it too quickly, ‘accidentally’ grazing her fingertips with his own. They apologise, removing their hands with a speed which bears more in common with the electrified sting of a wasp than the agonising touch of flesh, and blush profusely. An existence composed of awkward smiles in the hallways, with lips drawn painfully back across hard, overly-whitened teeth, followed by long, wistful glances after each other, resulting in a pair of nervously averted eyes and puritanical, blushing flesh.
* * *
‘Jesus, why down’t yew look where your gewing?’ The words were slurred, blocked as they were around some thick, tasteless sweet, shovelled into a slack mouth, no doubt deserving of any ill description which could be brought to bear against it. She was short, a child in fact, though her eyes could not be said to possess a simple cruelty, instead a selfishness and greed that knew nothing of Evil’s grandeur. In fact, it could easily be argued, by the distaste and disgust across that ignorant, pig-like face, that it knew nothing of any relevance, save the desires of the self. The mother, that irreligious figure who could not have been older than myself, all but leapt off the high step, pushing the rusted pram containing her second child before her. It only took one glance to realise her child’s source of discontent.
The white stick, held tightly in a hand the child had knocked aside, clattered against my leg, forcing the old man to mutter an apology to the air. I went to knock his apology aside with one of my own, accompanied by an expression of hatred directed towards the child.
‘He’s blind.’ The mother said sharply, moments before she broke into laughter at her child’s words. The pig, her small fat face was grinning at her mother’s pleasure, opened her mouth, so full with the thick brown paste that so resembled the shit she had been raised by. Before the first syllable could be uttered, however, my curled fist slammed into those small, already yellowing teeth.
As she stumbled backwards, I know I should have felt ashamed, I should have felt that I was doing something wrong. In the absence of any such emotion, I hit her again, this time with a straight left directly against her small, upturned nose, which I felt break. The twist of that cartilage, not even half as old as my own, beneath the pressure of my bone was accompanied by nothing besides pleasure.
That almost stopped me, until I saw the horror on the face of the crowd, the mother standing there in her leopard print hoodie over a black and pink tracksuit, with an e-cigarette in between her dully opened lips and her long, manicured nails curving over the handles of her child’s pram. I tried to h
old myself back, to chain the rage which no one else seemed to feel, but by the time I had formed the simply syllable ‘no’, whispered weakly in the inhumane section of my brain, the human soul had raised its voice.
‘Yes,’ it cried to me, bringing tears to my eyes with the volume of its cry, ‘YES!’ So, before the misunderstanding eyes of her failure of a parent, before the all-knowing eyes of her sibling, before the horrified blind man she had maligned and before the faceless, voyeurism of the crowd who, rather than stopping me, merely pulled out their expensive phones and began to film, I killed a child as one might have killed a hog in ages long past.
The blood ran in rivulets along the worn paint, dripping from my wildly swinging arms until flecks of it danced across the crowd, like flies against a carcass. It was warm, steaming in the cold air, and I still didn’t stop. My lungs screamed at me to do so, for their own relief rather than that of the fat, broken body below me, and I still could not stop.
I saw the remnant of evolutionary theory crying; saw the tears and the chocolate and the blood and the snot combined, as they were, into one gelatinous mess. A maelstrom, into which my hands found themselves dipping again and again, like an increasingly desperate swimmer caught in some tumultuous tidal wave.
I still think I am there sometimes, on my knees before the thing’s corpse, no longer even resembling the anthropomorphised piglet I had long since begun to beat. The stench emerging from its already bloated stomach is unbearable, and I vomit heavily, choking on the thick liquid lacking in alcohol, which covers the blood on my hands as it runs down my arms, across my white-knuckled, bone-exposed fists and into the caved skull of an evolutionary, psychological and societal mistake.
* * *
‘Where do you go now?’ He asked the air, stood before the flickering screen. ‘Where do you, for all your freedoms, have to go from here? Nowhere of any great meaning, of course, but into the chains, into that warped metal which so resembles my own!’ The emptiness is his reply, the silence of nothingness, the universe whimpering out its emptiness. ‘We cannot keep this in, no, no, no! This needs to be struck from history! For once, since the narcissism and the rage and the truth escaped, I need you to be honest; I need you to be trustworthy and logical, but not given to these fits of honesty which I find unjustifiable.’