Colin looked across at Brian, who tapped his watch with his index finger. Colin shrugged his shoulders. “Okay chaps, I’m going in,” he said in a fake posh accent, like one of the spitfire pilots in a war film. Brian hummed the theme tune to Dambusters loudly, and beat out the rhythm with the palms of his hands on the edge of the table. Colin pushed open the door slowly, and poked his head through the opening.
Becky and Kaz were standing in front of a large mirror, dabbing their faces with balls of cotton wool. He watched them, puzzled. “What are you doing?” he said eventually.
Kaz’s eyes flicked towards his, reflected in the mirror. “Oi get out, you can’t come in here,” she said, her face reddening. Colin slid through the door and let it close behind him. “Too late, I already did.”
Becky giggled and continued dabbing her face while Kaz turned to face Colin angrily. “Get out,” she said firmly, pointing at the door and taking a step towards him menacingly.
Colin ignored her, and looked around the spotlessly clean toilet with amazement. The place smelled of flowery perfume instead of shit and piss, and there wasn’t even any graffiti on the walls. He watched Becky’s reflection in the mirror, and when he caught her eye she smiled at him.
“Are you going to be long?” he asked. “Only we need to go for the bus soon.”
“Come on Becky,” Kaz said, pushing past Colin and heading towards the door.
Becky dropped a cotton wool ball into the sink and turned to face Colin, leaning her hands against the sink casually behind her, her chest pushed out. “Do we need to go right now?” she said softly, looking into his eyes.
“Yeah,” said Colin, turning towards the door and following Kaz through it.
* * *
Outside on the street, Brian held both arms out straight in front of him and moaned, “Urrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhh,” with his mouth open and his head held at an angle. He took shambling steps towards Kaz. Colin put the record he was holding inside his leather jacket and zipped it up, holding it securely in place with a corner tucked into the hem of his jeans. He raised his own arms out in front of him and lumbered towards Becky.
“They’re coming to get you, Rebecca,” he said in a drawn out, gormless-sounding voice mimicking a character from an old black and white zombie film he had watched on TV once.
Becky squealed in delight and grabbed Kaz’s hand before running off down the street with her, twin pairs of monkey boots clattering down the pavement, taking furtive glances behind them to make sure they were still being followed.
Colin and Brian shambled slowly after them, their loud moans drawing attention from a group of trendies across the road.
“Sid’s dead!” one of them shouted, but Colin and Brian ignored them, their human prey having stopped a short distance away so that they could catch them up.
“Urrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhh,” Brian moaned, closing his arms around Kaz, his mouth moving towards her neck to bite it. He made a chomping sound as his mouth brushed against her neck. Kaz jerked her head to one side and screamed in Brian’s ear, a long piercing scream, and Brian jolted away, clamping his hand over his ear.
“Ahhh, I’ve gone deaf,” he cried.
“What?” Colin asked.
“I’ve gone deaf.”
“What?”
“I’ve gone … oh, fuck off, you cunt.”
“Poor Brian,” said Kaz, laughing, and looping her arm through his.
“Time to get a spurt on,” Colin said, glancing at Becky.
* * *
At the bus station, they sat on a long, wooden bench while they waited for Kaz and Becky’s bus to arrive. They lived in a different part of town to Colin and Brian, and their bus was due to arrive a few minutes before their own. Brian and Kaz were holding hands and chattering away to each other. Colin sat next to Becky and looked down at his shoes, his fingers steepled together in his lap. He wondered if Becky would punch him in the face if he tried to kiss her, and he licked his lips. He looked up at her and she smiled, brushing against him with her shoulder. Colin bit his lip, and looked away.
The bus arrived with a hiss of hydraulic brakes, and Becky and Kaz stood up and walked towards it. The driver wrote something in a notebook before opening the doors.
“All aboard the skylark,” he said, putting the notebook away and looking towards them.
Colin and Brian waved to the girls, and started to shuffle off to their own bus stop. Becky quickly stepped in front of Colin and threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips, long and lingering. Colin winced in pain as she crushed the cut on his lip, but the surge of emotion that coursed through him as he tasted the Pernod, blackcurrant, and cheese and onion crisps on her tongue, sent his head reeling. He raised his arms to return the embrace, intending to pull her waist closer to his, but as suddenly as she appeared, she was gone. She slipped out of his grasping hands and jumped onto the bus after Kaz.
Colin watched, a wide, daft grin on his face, as they stomped their way across the floor of the bus to the back seat. He waved idiotically while they both blew kisses through the back window as the bus pulled out from the station.
“We should have got on that bus with them,” he said to Brian when the bus had disappeared from view.
“It’s the last one, how would we get back home?”
Colin shrugged. “Who cares?”
Walking the short distance to their own bus stop, Colin felt like he was walking on air. Brian was unusually quiet too, obviously lost within his own thoughts.
Colin was still grinning two hours later, laid in bed, wide awake and bursting with energy while a record played quietly in the background so that it wouldn’t disturb his grandmother’s sleep. It was the Cockney Upstarts gig tomorrow night, and Becky would be in town in the afternoon, so it was already looking like it would be the perfect day. Things just don’t get better than this.
The Complete Punk Faction
Nine interlinked slice of life dramas set in and around a small Yorkshire town in the early 1980s. Written by shouting poet Marcus Blakeston, they are populated by an assortment of punks, skinheads, yobs and hooligans. Not suitable for yuppies.
Professionally designed ebook in the following formats:
Mobi (for Amazon Kindle, etc)
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PDF (for printing 2 pages per A4 sheet)
Instant download upon paying.
Free from any DRM restrictions — your ebook, yours forever.
Get it from here:
https://sites.google.com/site/marcusblakeston/home
From the same author on Feedbooks
Punk Faction - Punk and Disorderly (2011) Punk rocker Colin Baxter was looking for a good night out, getting as drunk as possible to escape the tedium of his life on the dole. He certainly wasn’t looking for a fight with one of the local skinheads.
* * *
Punk Faction : Yob Culture (2011) Skinhead Trog was in a foul mood when he pushed through the door to The Black Bull, and the rowdy sounds of his favourite band The Cockney Upstarts playing on the jukebox did little to calm him. It was bad enough having his bird yelling and screaming at him and then stamping off in a sulk without having some gobby student call him a ‘rotter’.
Punk Faction is a new series of short, interlinked stories set in and around a small Yorkshire town in the early 1980s. Written by 1980s fanzine writer and shouting poet Marcus Blakeston, they are populated by an assortment of punks, skinheads, yobs and hooligans. This is life how it really was for Thatcher’s lost generation.
Not suitable for yuppies.
* * *
Punk Faction - Sniffin Glue (2011) There’s only one thing worse than having some kid yapping in your ear while you’re trying to enjoy a good bag of glue in peace, and that’s having the coppers turn up while you’re off your head and unable to defend yourself.
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Food for the mind
ion - It's All Done By Mirrors
Punk Faction - It's All Done By Mirrors Page 3