 
CONCRETE

IAN DYER

This book is the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author. If you enjoyed this book then please encourage others to purchase their own copy. Thank you for respecting the authors work. ©

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and events are all from the authors mind. Any resemblance to persons either living or dead is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 Ian Dyer.

All rights reserved.

'The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes, you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite.'

William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch.

'If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our own institutions, great is our sin.'

Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle.

Table of Contents

Foundations

A Passing Stagnation

Craig Shaw

Addict

Little Extra Won't Hurt

The Cut Stuff

Penthouse Crack

Broken Mirror

Bleach

Wild Boys

Not Today

Just For Show

Ruined

Daylight Through A Smeared Window

Downward Spiral

An Apology

My Fathers Eyes

Reinforced

#

#  foundations

There is a lake. Its waters are clear and full of life. They seep into the foundations of the earth. Surrounding the lake, trees grow tall, uninterrupted, their ambitions know of no boundaries and their harsh tips tickle the birds, they scrape the clouds. Behind those tall trees, encircling the lake, the earth rises up, grass all the possible shades of green you can think of. Weaved into that grass are dark red bushes that look like scabs on the face of Mother Earth. In between the trees and deep inside the bushes and running amuck in the detritus of the forest there are creatures both great and small. You cannot see them, but their scurries and twittering's can be heard all through the day and into the night. There are no monsters here, only those that you bring along for the journey. From the top of the hill, looking down upon it like a god, it is as if you are standing atop a giant bowl, the hilltop acts as the rim and the lake the liquid that sits within it. To drink that liquid is to taste divinity.

Today the air is still, as sharp as a knife. One cannot tell where the land and water separate such is the calmness upon the lake. The blue sky is both above and below and for each bird that swoops in, be it a kingfisher, a swift, or a jackdaw, they have a twin reflected upon the silvery glass surface.

No clouds spoil the day. The sun arches across the sky as it has done for a millennia, its beams of light bring life to the world and that life in response breeds its own life and will try to keep on going until something else comes along and puts a stop to it.

A lone dragonfly lands upon the water. For just a split second, a sliver of time, the silver sheet is broken. A fat trout tries to grab the dragonfly, but fails, and then in natures great irony a kingfisher plucks the hunter fish from the water and now the silver sheet is destroyed and the kingfisher flaps hard as it scurries away across the lake and into its nest carrying the distressed trout in its spear like beak. The dragonfly buzzes on, unaware of recent events it weaves its little body through the pollen air without seemingly a care in the world.

On the western shore of the lake, under the cover of an ancient willow, a girl stands with a baby in her arms. She is holding the baby tight to her ample bosom. Her face is pale, it has not seen that many summers, her skin is soft, it has not yet begun to sag under the weight of age. Her eyes are closed, you would think her asleep. Beneath her eyelids are spheres of blue sapphire, lights of life, black holes orbited by blue rings. She's a pretty girl and that's the problem, pretty girls attract boys like they always have and always will and those boys have urges, ancient desires, ones that cannot be simmered down or left to broil for they are dangerous, flammable. Boys are like flowers that are ready to seed, and only an act of God can stop them from doing so. Some girls have them same urges, shunned upon but not extinct, and Gwen, the girl we are watching now, is one such girl. The baby in her arms is testament to that.

A soft breeze blows, the leaves rustle, the lake ripples, the pollen dances like spring fairies, and above Gwen the branches sway, caught in the rhythmic beauty of the day. It is a cold wind on a hot day; _the Wind of Summers End_ her father calls it, and even though he is a poor farmer he knows the weather but cannot sow or reap to save the family no matter how much he prays to his silent God. The soft cool breeze that delicately caresses Gwen's face as it floats by does not take away the heat that surrounds her and the baby.

When she finally opens her eyes she looks down to her sleeping child, It's hot again today, she tells it, for the baby has not yet been named, The water will be cool though, she coos to it and Gwen unwraps the baby from her shawl and lays it upon the ground. The baby stirs a little but does not wake and Gwen undresses, her pale skin glowing in the sunlight, and she is not shy about being naked and does not look to see who may be watching because even though she is young she can get the boys looking and the men sinning. She piles her clothes onto the floor behind her, falling leaves come to rest upon them. Gwen picks up the baby, kisses its forehead, for not only does it not have a name but is was born cursed, wretched like, with both a boys and girls sexual organs. She holds the baby in her folded arms and walks into the lake. The cool water laps at her feet, then her calves, then cools her thighs. She shivers as the water touches her vagina, then her navel, and then her nipples harden and Gwen starts to breathe hard as if her body is recollecting the sweet joy and inner pain she had gone through during the act to make this poor child. She keeps on going, deeper into the water, her feet sink into the mud and it becomes harder to walk but still she goes on because she can't go back because if she goes back with it still alive then there will be hell to pay and she doesn't want another punishment because the bruises have only just gone from the last one. The baby starts to stir, she tries to calm it, and she does well for the baby falls back to sleep. Gwen's wrists and fingers become wet and soon the water is covering her arms and now just the baby's head is above the clear waters. Even though Gwen senses that the water is there, that the baby is in danger, she keeps on walking into the lake and does not look down, just keeps looking ahead to the shore over on the other side. The water is now up to her neck, it is impossible to walk, and so she lets go of what she is holding and swims across the lake. She is a good swimmer, better than her three brothers, and quickly she is stood on the other side, her body dripping wet and her young chest heaving. Her hands are empty.

Gwen looks up and sees the kingfisher bury its beak into the fish it caught. Wet pink meat is torn away from white bone, rainbow skin flashes in her eyes. Gwen takes a deep breath, smiles, and even though two of her teeth are blackened with rot, she has a beautiful smile. Once the kingfisher is done, Gwen turns and swims back across the lake. At the point where she let go of her baby she does not look down or turn or feel any pity, for she is young and doesn't understand what she should be feeling but instead fears the wrath she would have had to have faced, she fears the loss of the pink meat she likes up inside of her and the power it gives her over the men and the boys.

Under the shadow of the willow tree she dresses, picks up her shawl, and without a mirror she makes herself look smart, respectable, but she is still a child really and so picks a daisy and places it in her thick and youthful hair.

Gwen climbs the hillside and heads toward her small village where her parents await with a Preacher Man who holds a Bible and a Crucifix in his just and fair hands.

# a passing stagnation

The world moves quickly along, summer comes and goes, autumn is bypassed like a forgetful birthday and soon winter claws and grabs at the earth. This year's winter is harsh, the nights are long, the hours in the sun are short. People wrap themselves in more and more layers but it does no good; the cold air has a blade this year and it is sharp and it digs in, bone deep. Farm animals cannot survive outside so they are led inside. Soon the ground is covered with frost, then snow, and then ice as the northern winds whip up like the screams of the dead haunting the living. The villagers have never known it so cold, wood supplies run out, mouths get hungry as the food starts to run short. They did not know that such weather could exist and so did not prepare. Men go out to cut trees and they fall ill. Their axes and wood saws grow blunt for the trees are hard with ice and do not want to fall. The men become angry, violence awakened to their own pathetic uses. A man's violence is like fire, even the coldest winter cannot smother it.

Women cook the food until there is nothing more to cook. Animals kept for their milk or for breeding are slaughtered, their meet is stored, but not for long as this village shares everything which in the end will be its undoing. Something shared is something halved. The old men, elders of the village, tell tales of dark winters long gone. They proclaim that this winter pales in comparison, and the young believe them, find comfort in the old timer's whimsical tales, fake empowerment based on falsehoods uttered by senile minds.

It grows colder. Each breath is a frozen blade to the chest. The old that once boasted of their past deeds die, and the young become scared for they feel Death is coming for them now, and Death is a bastard sonofabitch. Christmas time comes and goes all under a blanket of snow and misery. Chills bury themselves deep into bones and there are no festivities for now the children's faces turn red and blotchy and their skin begins to stick to their bones. Men that were unwell do not recuperate, fevers jump from house to house on the backs of rats and those rats are killed and eaten now that the meat has run out and the wheel of death turns and turns. Each birth is still born, the northern winds harsh scream is drowned out by the new mother's cries.

Illness spreads like a breached river.

People are prisoners of their own homes and the year renews to a silent crowd of living skeletons. There is no let-up in the cold, the winds keep blowing, the frost grips to the hard dying soil like a baby's mouth on their mother's tit. Most houses are empty, red crosses on the doors mark these as plague houses, but nobody seems to skirt around them as Death is a welcomed friend now. It's a sweet release. In these trying times children are smothered to end their suffering and they are fed to the earth to appease the dark Devil that has no name for that's all they know, they do not understand.

Then the wind drops. The snow melts revealing ruined soil, rotten roots, dead bodies.

The village has died.

The survivors wait until the spring buds appear. Those buds poke out but turn to mulch. The men say that the ground is wasted and cannot be tilled or seeded or ploughed or saved. It's time to escape. They climb the hill to the lake for they need water on their journey. The hill has turned to mud and the way up and then down is slippery and the closer they get to the water the fouler the smell becomes and continues to do so until they have no choice but to cover their mouths and noses with their hands. Flies and mosquitos swarm about them, hungry little mouths want hot blood, they care not for the risks they take trying to suck the red sweet nectar from thin skin.

The water is as dead as the land, stagnant and standing, full of rot and disease. The corpses of animals litter the area like fallen leaves. Men cry and fall to their knees and the women tear at their hair and scream and clutch dying children close to their bosom trying to protect them from something that cannot be seen but can be felt. Gwen thinks back to when she took her damned child and drowned it in the lake that stands before her. All this has happened since that day, she thinks to herself, and Gwen blames herself. She looks over her shoulder and her eyes, which do not shine as much as they used to, scan the high hillside, and seems to look through it, out into the muddy brown nothing that lays beyond. In silence she walks into the lake. The remaining men and women watch her, they all think the same thing as she does but do not have the stomach for it. They all look away as Gwen disappears into the water and when they look back she has gone and just stinking ripples mark her existence. There is an unspoken conversation of eyes. Outcomes agreed upon with not one word spoken.

As one, they walk into the lake to die.

Though they do not die as one, for some fight against death when the waters close in about them.

The water ripples, if only but for a fleeting moment.

Then there is nothing, a stillness, nature continues on its destructive path.

The sun falls, the clouds roll across the sky, the seasons come and go.

The lake dries out leaving a deep hole. Over time this hole fills with much rotted nature. The village becomes nothing but an archaeologists stumbling treasure trove, but no one will dig here so it is lost to the dirt.

Months turn into years, years to decades.

Then a new type of man comes. He wears a bright yellow jacket and a white hard hat and he smokes many fags. He is a clever man, a controller of heavy machines that turn the fields into concrete slabs and the hills into flat tarmac. He reads from rolled up blueprints and turns those pictures into tall structures that are strong and true. He does not understand nature, he has no need of it. Nature to him is an obstacle, an obstacle that can be overcome with diesel engines, metal hooks, fire, and men with shovels and picks and trowels are his instruments. Other men soon follow; they wear suits for they are the money men with business cards and shiny cars and young wives with bright red lipstick smeared across their petulant faces.

More men come and they wear jeans and yellow jackets and have dirty hands and they do not have hard hats and they follow orders from the man that does because they do not have money and need it, desperately in some cases. Explosives blow the hills apart and the soil is used to backfill the gaping mouth that was once our beautiful lake. Timber from the ripped out trees becomes fuel for the machines that make the tar, fuel that turn the mixers, fuel to keep the men warm in the cold winters.

Where there were hills there are now roads, and where there were roots of trees and of flowers there is now conduits for electricity and pipes for gas and for water. Bushes are now walls of red bricks, flowers are lampposts that stick out of the ground. Where the lake once stood is now a flat base on which a block of flats is built. Surrounding it there are more bases on which taller tower blocks are built that stretch higher into the sky than any tree could. Where the village once was is now a row of shops and a car park. Roads linking to a bigger road that joins another development a few miles over spread out like roots seeking water. The man is making a concrete monster with tarmac fingers and lead feet.

Three towers are built, they reach to the sky much like the trees that were once there before them. The new buildings form a triangle around where the lake used to sit. The towers look over a small block of flats and shafts of sunlight pierce through the gaps. There are no gardens, no wildlife, just things made of plastic and of metal. The man with the white hard hat stands back, the men who wear suits shake his hand and smile and admire the world they have built and when their self-gratification is complete they get into shiny new cars and drive off to their shiny new homes that aren't in tower blocks but on hillsides that won't get blown apart and flattened to make room for many houses for the many people.

The tower blocks are named and the families moved in and they are surrounded by grey concrete and glass and straight edges and they believe that the world they have moved into is the world of tomorrow and that all their hopes and dreams will become answered in this bright new future.

The little row of shops grows busy and the owners rub their hands and pay their rents and for a moment, a splash of time, everyone is happy.

There is no true nature here. In this concrete jungle not a tree grows that has a heritage. They are all fake, a mask hiding the reality of the manmade nightmare that the men in suits and the men with heavy machines have made. They have created homes for families and those families can travel to work on roads in their cars or on the busses or on the trains that the man has provided without thought to the future. It was all about the money and the man cared not for the future he was creating, just the balance of his bank account and the smile on the bank manager's face.

Years roll by, not many, for time seems to move slower now that the man is back. Families make other families, a hierarchy is built, and people start to know their place. Urban legends are created for there is no history here. As the decades roll by winters and summers do not seem to matter for concrete is hard and the families are protected by it. Even the harsh winds have moved on, as if they know that they are useless now against this man made world.

But a rot does get in.

A man made rot, a disease that the whole country feels for this is a deep rot and this rot eats at the heart of the housing complex. Some families get out whilst they can, others stay and work through it. But to work through the hard times means to dig a long muddy tunnel with just spoons and paper spades and these people must learn to live a frugal life which man has lost the ability to do and soon the rot turns into poverty and neglect and what was once the promised future becomes a violent putrid lie of present day.

It becomes hard to feed the family, harder still to pay the rent, and soon men with note pads and deep pockets and steep interest rates come visiting and their business is good and their retributions firm but fair. Work starts to fade into nothing more than a memory or a fairies wish, the schools close, new ones are built, but the education is not as it once was and so a cycle begins that is hard to pull away from.

The man adapts and the man endures. The Welfare State comes to pay a visit to the towers and the families like it and so it stays and becomes a friend. And where before men and women were thought well of when they worked hard for what they had those same people now find themselves sniggered at and jeered at and thought of as alien because the state can provide the same as what working does for not nearly half as much effort. A man who has not worked his whole life is created and he is adored and should not be thought badly of for he is a construct of the nation, a new type of Government Man, the ultimate consumer.

Those without work become bored. Fingers get restless and pockets run dry. Those that are without want it all and soon a sense of injustice thrives and a self-importance takes over and it empowers the people and thoughts fester and turn sour. Being smart is overshadowed by being ignorant. Thoughts of futures disappear and everything is about the now and what can be gotten now even though the price to be paid is great. The people demand respect, as the earth that they stand on once did when it was green and full of life. But no one listened then when the earth died screaming so they don't listen now and the people are ignored and wished to be dead by the men that wear suits and live in houses built on hillsides and drive cars built by robots and have wives with older petulant faces that with a single slap would crack and fall to the floor.

Hillside is left to rot; even the road sweepers aren't welcome anymore.

# Craig Shaw

Craig is engaged to Heather, has been for three days. Three long days. They had a little party down the local to celebrate, such is the tradition in Hillside, and he was all smiles, handshakes, and thanks for coming even though deep down he wanted to go at them all with a shovel because he was being forced into something he didn't want to do. Craig Shaw is forced into nothing. The last bloke that tried to force him into anything ended up in hospital, eating from a tube for four weeks whilst they fixed up his shattered jaw with wire and glue and now the prick cannot speak and the world is a better place for it.

Craig had kept up those smiles for those three long days, but today he had finally had enough, just way too much ball breaking for his liking. Stood around the back of the corner shop in an alleyway that stank of stale piss and cheap cider, and with the tower blocks looming over both of them, he, and his mate, chatter about this and that. Paul, his friend, senses a change in Craig, he asks what the problem is.

Coz' I don't want to marry that fuckin hog, do I? and that strikes his short fat mate as odd, Hog? You got a screw loose or sumpthing? She's well fit.

Craig throws the tatty end of a roll up onto the floor and does not bother to stub it out, Yeah, well, you try livin with it. She's fuckin mental. If it want for her old man I would have been shot of it a long time ago.

A cleverer man would have sensed that Craig was lying then, but Paul is not clever and Craig knows this. Craig has street smarts, knows when to keep his mouth shut and his shaven head down. Paul on the other hand, is as thick as his own neck and got the scars to prove it. One of those scars runs straight down from Pauls left ear all the way to his collarbone and if it was not for Craig that wound would not have healed such as it was and he would have been six feet under dancing with old Gwen.

If it's that bad then why'd you propose? Brickin it over of her old man? Seems to me you made a rod for your own back.

Craig pushes himself away from the wall of the corner shop and takes a step toward his mate, Fuck off, you aint got no idea what it's like havin a woman who constantly breaks yaballs every goddamned day, and Paul shuffles back as he sees Craig's hands are clenched and his knuckles are turning white and that gets Craig even more riled up because for once he would like someone to front him up, What the fuck you know about anything, eh? If it weren't for me, you fat fuck, you'd be down Railing Street pushing up daisies. Now you listen and you listen good, it aint got nothin to do with her dad, it's all me and her. I mean, yeah, her old man is a toughguy, but it aint him you gotta worry about is it? It's all his mates. You fight him you fight half the fuckin Triangle. Bunch of backstabbing fucks. Nah, I'm stuck with that bitch until I'm dead.

Paul raises his chubby hands, he can see where Craig wants this to go and wants no part of it, All right, Craig, mate, all right. Meant nothin by it. So why you wanna dump it then? Finally stopped opening her legs?

Craig takes in a deep breath and rests back against the wet wall. From inside the corner shop raised voices echo but neither Craig nor Paul pays them any attention. Once settled he sets his narrow brown eyes onto his dirty trainers, Nah, she's gone and got herself pregnant aint she. Fucking idiot. She had to go and ruin things. All the fuckin time she ruins things. You remember last year on my birthday, when we went out and those strippers turned up. Fuck me, she raised merry damned hell when she found out. Thought I had fucked one of em, probably thought I'd fucked em all knowing her, mad fucking twat. Took me days to get her to see sense.

Paul smiles, But you had, well, you screwed one of em didn't ya.

Well yeah, but it aint the point is it? She forgets how hard I have to work sometimes, how hard I have to work to pay for that pocksy fucking flat we live in. She forgets what I have to do to keep up the weekly payments and make sure she can watch those god-damned soaps she loves so much. I swear to fuckin Christ, Paul, if she makes me watch another one of those shows I'm gonna batter her to death with the remote control, and Craig means it enough to act out what he was going to do by raising his right arm and smashing it down hard against the thin air that represents Heathers head.

Paul laughs and his belly bounces up and down behind his tatty Metallica t-shirt. Craig started laughing too because it was far better for him to do that than what he really wants to do. He'd only actually hit her once before, but the urge had come over him many times. That's what set him apart, he believed, from all the other meatheads that lived around here; he could squash the urge to bat her fucking brains out and save it all up for when she really needed to be taught who was the real boss. Save it all up for a rainy day.

A dog starts barking from one of the balconies and another joins in and then another and another until there is a chorus of them. Not soon after their owners start yelling until dogs and humans have one voice. But like the raised voices from the corner shop Paul and Craig ignore them for they are common noises around here.

So what ya gonna do? Get her to get rid of it? Paul takes a can of cola from the six-pack he had stolen from the corner shop and opens it. He offers it first to Craig but Craig waves it away and Craig watches as Paul tears off the ring pull and stashes it away in his dirty jeans pocket so that later he can use it as a blade to slice open the soft flesh of his wrist and, using a dropper, drip little beads of skag into the open wound, safer than a needle.

She won't get rid of it. Even if it were going to come out all fucked up she would still have it. Heather loves kids, would have a football teams worth if she had her way, and Craig kicks out at the floor and then adds as if to justify it to himself, Nah, she aint getting rid no matter what I say or do. Guess I'm stuck with it and stuck with her, her old man, and that fucking pocksy flat, and her ball breaking whinging. Arrrrgghhh fuck this shit, man, I tell ya, I have had enough of it.

Paul takes another swig from the can, belches, then throws the can into the corner of the alley where it comes to a rest with all the other shit that has been thrown there, Kid gives you a bit of extra cash though don't it?

Well yeah, but that's for all the nappies and food and stuff, aint it. What it brings in it will eat and shit out. I'm proper fucked is what I am, and Craig looks at his watch and sees that the time has moved on, Come on, best get back to it, especially coz its pay day and you look as though you need a fix. Plus my belly wants a beer tonight so that I can drown out that moaning little cunt and it going on and on about what to get the baby and how she wants the nursery set up. Where the fuck she think all that is going to come from?

Paul picks up the remnants of his six-pack and together both he and Craig leave the alleyway. Even though the cola has had been stolen from the corner shop not twenty minutes prior Paul makes no effort to hide them away as they walk past the shop window. They could both see the owner, Mr Patel, stood behind his till guarding the expensive tobacco and alcohol. On the shop floor, his wife busies herself filling shelves with cheap goods and she does it with force because gone are the days where she cared for the stuff they sold there. Both of them have sweaty brows, Mr Patel will not buy any form of air conditioning so the heat from the fridges and the lights cooks the shop like an oven.

The two men cross the road just before the set of crooked traffic lights. They are heading toward what used to be a row of sheds but is now just piles of bricks and stacks of drying timber. The sun would have been on their backs had the towers not been there, so even though it was hot the shade they seemed to be perpetually in made it feel chillier than it was.

The demolition site they work in is fenced off, two huge signs swing on bits of twisted wire. Warning signs defaced with spray paint, there is an empty trolley overturned by the entrance. A needle twinkles in the dead light of the sun.

Paul sniffs as they walk into the rubble yard and spits out a wad of green phlegm. He has a constant running nose, a constant cold, H-Cold. It annoys the hell out of Craig but his annoyance is futile.

Craig picks up his hammer, swings it a few times thinking about the sweet sound it would make against the heads of both his future wife and his future dumbasfuck father-in-law.

Paul picks up his own hammer and follows behind Craig until they get to their workstation. It's not a grand station to work at, merely two old carpenter's horses and a bit of half-rotten worktop made into a bench. They don't need anything too fancy for all they are doing is de-nailing the timber and hacking off mortar from the bricks. It's a shit job, a boy's job, but times are tough.

When you are standing within the Hillside Triangle, surrounded by the three towers, there is no wind, the air is still, heavy with the stench of the bins and of the people, but out here in the rubble yard the wind seems to gust and now it sweeps across the ground and blows red brick dust over the two men's trainers. Craig brushes at his soiled trainers, Fuckin dust gets everywhere, and then he goes about his work de-nailing the old timbers that once held up the sheds.

Paul remains silent during the afternoon, unsure of what to say or how to say it and he is thinking all the time. Paul hacks away pieces of green mortar from the heavy red engineering bricks with little enthusiasm. He starts sweating almost instantly and drops of salty stink water run down his face, they pool on the floor and then disappear as the hungry earth consumes them.

An hour later a car drives passed with a blown exhaust. Craig looks up, sees whose is driving and waves. The driver waves back, Pass us one of those colas would ya? Paul does as he is told, opens it for him too, and hands it to Craig with a little smile, Yaknow, I've been thinkin, wiping his brow on his sleeve, What if you were to, yaknow, beat her a bit, like in the stomach right where the baby is. It worked for my brother, didn't it? whispering and leaning in Paul wheezes, Maybe you could make _her_ disappear.

Craig takes the can from his lips, What you going on about? I aint gonna smack her about for Christsake. Her old man would fuck me right up.

I suppose. What about the other thing. You've done it before aintcha, the old boy from Pine Tower, remember. We must've been about thirteen when we gave it to him good.

Craig's eyes couldn't narrow any further than they already were due to the hot, dusty wind, and he knew that so he gritted his teeth and took in a long breath so that to Paul, Craig looked like he was snarling, Not the same thing, Paul, and you'd best keep yer mouth shut about that or it'll be you that disappears, not her, you got that, and to emphasise Craig crushes the can in one hand and lets it fall to the floor. The earth sucks up the brown liquid that seeps out but it is not thankful for it.

For the rest of the day the two men work in silence and they make good progress and their piles of bricks and timber are a little higher than they had been for a few days. When the man arrives in his shiny truck Paul and Craig load it up and the man watches with eagle eyes. A few of the bricks he turns away for they were too badly chipped and Craig gives Paul the eyes. The man turns none of the wood away and Craig puts that down to the man being scared of him, not the quality of his work. When the truck is loaded the two men stand at the entrance with their hands by their sides, their faces dirty, jeans a strange shade of red-blue and their trainers broken. The man approaches with an envelope, hands it to Craig and then turns and leaves with just a nod. The truck starts up with a hungry growl and drives away. Small pebbles dash about the two men's feet and engulf them, making their eyes sting and their teeth grind.

Craig counts the money, feels the urge to short-change his mate, but does not. He halves the pathetic amount and gives Paul his share of the eighty quid, piss poor money for piss poor work, and he spits in the direction of the truck.

Paul stretches and farts, What you doing now?

Craig looks over to the three tower blocks and sighs, Home, he mumbles, and walks off, leaving Paul alone to lock up.

Craig crumples up the money and shoves it into his pocket. Forty quid for two days work. As he walks across the road toward the row of shops his jeans leave a fine coating of red dust on the unkempt paving slabs and rutted tarmac. To his left is the local pub and Craig stands on the pavement looking at the open green door, it calls to him. Money is tight, even for a pint of cheap lager and even with the notes in his pocket, money is just way too tight. Craig decides it's best to just keep on going. He keeps his head down as he trundles passed the electrical shop that sells second hand hoovers and fourth hand washing machines. Next up is the café, which stinks of grease and sweat, but here he raises his head and looks in the window and waves at the man behind the counter. There are two empty shops further on; Craig has no memory of them being used even though he is twenty-two years old. Finally the corner shop. He stands outside, not looking in, just staring at his dirty shoes, mindlessly gazing at the empty crisp packet that has befriended him, aware of the ants that scurry but thinking about the money in his pocket, the money burning a hole in his pocket.

Craig nods to himself.

The bell above the door ring-a-dings but the owner needs no warning. Mr Patel nods at Craig and Craig returns the gesture, Small bottle of Bullet, and Craig, from the corner of his eye, catches the owner's wife looking away from him, shaking her head. Craig watches her for a couple of seconds, tries to bore a hole in the back of head. Six pound fifty, please, Craig turns and looks at Mr Patel whilst taking out a ten-pound note. He does not hand it to him, just places it on the counter. Mr Patel makes no eye contact as he takes the money, runs it through the till, and hands Craig his change. Paul shakes his head. Mr Patel puts the change on the counter; I've not got a disease you know.

What you trying to say then? I'm a racist, is that it? Craig picks up the change, goes to put it into his back pocket, then remembers there is a hole in it, and so puts it in the front pocket which holds the notes. Mr Patel takes a step back and struggles, No, nothing like that, and Craig picks up his bottle of bourbon with a childish smile, If I didn't like you for the colour of your skin you lot wouldn't be in business.

Then why do you do it?

Because I can, and as Craig leaves, Goodnight Mr and Mrs Patel. Sweet dreams, and he closes the door with a little too much force, forcing the bell to come loose and it falls to the floor with a heavy clang.

Pleased with himself Craig unscrews the bottle cap and takes a huge gulp of hot sour liquid. It burns his throat on the way down, warms his belly, and makes his mind dance. It tastes good so he takes a few more swigs, and then a few more until he raises the bottle up and finds that it is empty, Great, and he throws the bottle onto the floor. It smashes below a bin that was made to hold such rubbish and that makes him laugh a fat belly laugh.

He takes a piss behind a wall where graffiti decorates every inch, apparently Trudy loves the cock and Mark is a gay cunt, and when finished he walks through the large black iron gate and into the Triangle. Three giants surround him now, twenty-five stories tall and as wide as half a football field each one of them. Great monoliths of concrete and glass and plastic. As he walks through the gate a slither of sunlight forces him to close his eyes and he scurries through it like a vampire would; protecting his eyes from the burning disk. The air is still but chilly for the sun does not make an impression this far into the Triangle. Craig does not live in one of the three tower blocks, his flat is in the small block of flats that are only two stories high and sit in the middle of the Triangle being watched by everyone. Whereas the tower blocks were concrete and pebble-dashed the smaller flats are made of red brick and have slate roofs and fake chimneys in each corner. There are three flats on each floor and Craig lives on the top floor in the far right hand corner.

There is chatter all around him as he heads toward the building named Gwen's Place. There are always voices, there are always people coming and going. This is a mini city, it never sleeps, it is normal to never be alone no matter what time of day it is.

Craig makes his way through the security door, which is broken and always open, and he skips up the stairs two at a time. There is a stink of too much bleach and stale sick in the air and when he finally gets to his door he starts to hop about from foot to foot as he needs a piss again. Clumsily, because he is drunk to the bone, he gets out his keys and unlocks the door. Slamming the door shut he runs into the toilet and takes another piss. Bright yellow brown drips fall onto the seat and he makes no effort to angle the stream.

Is that you, Craig?

Course it is, who else would it be?

Craig shakes his head and his penis sprays more piss over the toilet seat. He doesn't do his trousers back up and lets them fall to the floor. He slides his trainers off and leaves the pile of dirty clothes there on the floor where he knows Heather will pick them up later and clean them because she is good like that. A proper little housewife.

He looks at the pile of dirty clothes on the floor, then at the dirty white vinyl floor, then up at the dirt-streaked walls where no amount of cleaning will do them any good and he hisses at the filth that surrounds him and even the mirror is beyond cleaning. His face becomes distorted by the smears and the cracks. What the hell does she do all day? he thinks to himself, and he feels the rage building up inside of him.

What's for tea?

Lasagne. Be about twenty minutes.

Great, Craig whispers with a grimace, Yummy. Does fuck all all day whilst I work myself to the bone and I have to come home to shitty lasagne.

What was that? She is in the hallway now, a few steps from the bathroom.

Fuck me, woman, you got big ears aint ya! Craig walks out of the toilet into the dark hallway where Heather stands holding a fish slice and a tea towel. She looks up at him and tilts her head and strands of blonde hair fall over her eyes, she sweeps them away daintily. You have been drinking.

Yep. What you gonna do about it? Craig puffs out his chest as a boxer would before a fight because he all of a sudden knows what he is going to do no matter what the consequences will be. He knows he is drunk and knows that the bourbon is doing what it always does to him, but he does not care.

Nothing, just let me by would ya, I need the toilet.

With his chest puffed out Craig stands to one side and lets Heather walk by and he can see the sweat on her brow and smell the sickly sweet perfume he had stolen for her and given to her as a belated Valentine's Day gift. He can see those pert little tits under that tight vest top and he feels his cock stiffen a little. But that perfume stink is a bit too much. She always puts too much of it on, bathes in it almost. He turns his nose up at it, bile floats up, and he swallows hard to keep it down. The stink and her attitude is fuelling the bourbon rage, marching him forever on toward violence.

Heather walks into the bathroom and drops the fish slice onto the floor. What the fuck, Craig! There is piss and brick dust all over the fucking place. What are you some kind of fucking retard! You could have cleaned up after yerself.

Craig grins, that's it woman, you keep on doing that, he thinks to himself, and before Heather can turn and try to lock the door because she has suddenly realised what she has said and with much greater realisation, what he will do, Craig is upon her and he shoves the door open and grabs her by her soft smooth hair and she screams in pain and shock. Blood oozes from the torn skin of her scalp as he lifts her up from her crouched position and fresh tears start to stream down her pale face and her eyes are wide and her mouth open with shock.

What you fucking call me, you fucking little cunt! Craig's spit covers her mouth, she winces with every word he says, and he drags her out of the bathroom as she screams her apologies and that she did not mean it. Oh god I'm sorry, Craig, oh shit I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it.

He throws her through the living room door and she goes sprawling onto the floor flying through the air like a tossed match. A pint glass falls next to her, she goes to grab it and then decides not to and it smashes next to her, then Craig edges through the doorway in just his pants and a dirty t-shirt, and he's fired up, super fly fucking superman human punching machine. Heather is sobbing madly, trying to push herself backward but her head hurts and the armchair in the corner of the room is as far as she gets. There is no way out and she knows this.

You think you are so high and so fucking mighty, don't ya? Well I'm gonna beat that shit right outtaya, she shakes her head, Please don't, Craig. I'm sorry. I've had a hard day, You've had a hard day. Fuck off. You've been sat up here on yer fucking fat arse watching tele and talking bollocks with yer mates whilst I've been down their working myself tothebone just so that you can keep on doing nothing. Well I've hadafuckingnuff of it, you prancing around thinking yer shit don't stink and givin me shit about what I do just coz you think I aint gonna say nothing about it coz yer dad is the big man. Well fuck him and fuck you and to hell with this shitting place, Craig is standing by her now, towering over her, But the baby, Heather exclaims with wide eyes that believe this will be the way in which she can get out of the beating, Please, the baby, she pleads again, wiping fresh tears from her eyes and standing up a little awkwardly. Craig watches her stand up, his chest heaving, his whole body shaking with pent up rage, Wait, just wait, you'll hurt the baby, and she puts her hands on her belly as if to emphasize where it was growing and Craig smiles, I know, and Heather knows that smile, she has seen it too many times and recognising it she protectively raises her hands to her face but Craig unleashes two massive punches to her stomach and she falls to the floor wheezing and gasping and she is sick all over the carpet and her hands flop down reactively to cradle her belly, her face turning pale and Heather heaves and tries to turn away from the foot that is swinging toward her but she is far too slow and Craig's right foot slams into her chest ramming her breasts up against her ribs and before she can think of the pain the foot is back, only this time Craig hits his target and a deep sharp stabbing pain tears through her abdomen and up into her spine and her mind swims and then all she can think of is the baby screaming to death inside of her.

She passes out, but as she does, Heather is sure that she hears a ripping sound as she floats into the blackness. Blood trickles from her mouth, a small cut below her bruising tits rips open as another kick hits its target.

Craig is panting hard, his foot aches, and is covered in hot sick and a little blood and small a red bruise flower where he has made contact with Heathers soft belly flesh flowers like a spring daffodil. Thinking the job done he checks on Heathers condition, sees that she is still breathing and heaves a sigh of relief though he would not have been too put out if she were dead. He lifts up her vest top with a shaking hand and sees bruises reddening on her belly and chest. They are the shape of his foot and he chuckles such is his amazement.

Then an urge comes upon him. The urge to do what he had done once before and had enjoyed very much but swore he would never do again because of what he had promised to her and the family but now he can't think of nothing else it's all he can see and all he wants to do so he stands up, looks about the room, and then out of the main window just in case there are people peeking a look, but there is no one there, how could there be. He grabs Heather by her sleek pale legs and moves her so that she is in the centre of the living room. He turns Heather onto her belly, lifts up her dress, pulls down her pants, and licks his two middle fingers so that they are wet with spit. He forces them deep into her anus without much care. His cock is painfully stiff in an instant. He fucks her arse hard, slapping her arse and punching her on the back and he climaxes real quick, shooting his load half inside her and half on her cheeks and watches with sweat seeping into his eyes as the spunk trickles out of her hole and down her reddening buttocks and onto the carpet where it glistens like milky white pearls. Struggling to his feet he kicks her again so that she rocks, but there is nothing else from her and so he wipes his cock with the tea towel she had dropped earlier, and throws it at her. He goes into the kitchen to have some lasagne even though he hates the fucking stuff.

Craig is still eating when he hears Heather moaning from the living room that stinks of blood, semen, and sweat. Craig jams three more fork loads of the wretched pasta shit into his mouth. Once chewed and swallowed he spits a frothy wad of phlegm into the rest of the lasagne and leaves it on the side for his fiancé to eat later when she has her appetite back.

He smiles, chuckling to himself, knowing all the while that the little sassy cunt won't be so sassy anymore. Knowing that she won't be haven't a kid anymore and that he can carry on doing what he loves doing the best.

#

# addict

Three tower blocks reaching up to the endless sky. Crowded with people, all searching for a way out, a release of the dependency. Most could try harder.

A syringe lay in the gutter; its needle dripping with golden wastage. A woman sees it, she has scabs around her mouth, scabs around her cunt, her body is blessed with fresh sores which are festering, oozing a clear stinking juice into the world. Cardboard mattress, plastic bag pillows, a morning dew blanket. She leans over and sniffs at the brown liquid coming from the needle and her front brain lights up with a fetid relish. With her shrivelled tongue she licks it up and because it is sour and it is the skag she loves like the baby she once fed from her sagging tits her veins and heart and muscles contract into fit spasms which take her to the edge of death, the edge of paradise. She lifts the syringe, shakes it with her emaciated hand, the sun's rays lighting her ruined veins, her hand almost clear like a plastic bag, and it has been like that for months, years even, and probably will be all her life, and it will be until it lies dead at her side. There is some skag left in that misty syringe and so she hides behind a fence. With eagle eyes darting from here to there in time less than time she is alert. Alert in case the hyenas come and beat her to shit and take the stuff her arms crave. Quickly, defying the wraith that she is, the woman jabs the needle into a vein on her foot and pushes the plunger down slowly but defiantly. Fire rages through her veins and she can taste the fire and its flames are a crushing wave that drags her down and pulls her under until she drowns in red heat and her body floats in the green salty muck of a turbulent, frothing, glorious heroin sea. Bare footed, walking like undead macabre ballerina in a dance hall for the diseased and dying, paying no attention to the yellow pus semen that flows from her slit and runs down her leg till it dries and flakes like snakeskin she hums a lunatic's tune for her lips are broken and cannot form a whistle and she is such a long way from home. Around the corner, alleyway for tramps to sit and drink, is where her Pharmacist calls home and this place is dark and chilly and her tight jeans with tatty holes make the drinkers look up and their faces go in on themselves such is the ferocity of their erections and their faces go paler than the dead of which they are closer to than they know. Later they will grab hold of their hard pricks and tug hard on them, perhaps over each other, or into each other if that's the case, and they don't care because there are no queers or metrosexuals here; just needs and gash and holes and brown torn holes and cocks and cunts and crack and needs and alcohol. God the need, praise be to Jesus for the alcohol. The Pharmacist is life, slimy petulant life of cockroaches and sump sitters. More expensive better quality fast talking sharp shooter with a liquid tongue and he has deep pockets and sly winks and a tatty natty laugh and always for you and aint no profit in it for me so take it quick and come back for more and when yadone I is good and yeah the price is up a bit from last time but hey a man's gotta eat yaknow but hey man nice shot for trying me to get to lower it. Woman greets the man who holds the plastic pouch she wants and he holds out his hand for money but she has none, and so she unzips his trousers which are clean and crisp and takes out his cock which is clean and fresh and puts it into her blackened mouth and goes at it until he grabs her hair and squeezes the grease out of it just as his own grease shoots down her throat and she gags but takes the lot and it's the second load of salty protein she has had today and probably won't be the last. Package changes hands, she floats off whilst the Pharmacist stays and continues on selling his packets of powdered death, acidifying both young and old alike until they die and no one will give a shit for misery loves company, it always has and always will. But don't worry, there are always more in Hillside...........

.........Woman in lift, two men with her, their faces shut tight, teeth grinding, eyes that are small beads stuck onto fleshy sacks twitch and spin they reflect the skag whore back into the world and the world cracks under the strain. They watch her maddeningly, screaming for her packet. Clothes hang off of them like death-shrouds and hands twitch and claw at legs and scratch scabby itches making thick blood trickle down needle poked arms which are grey like moon dust and could be pulled off like an overcooked chickens thighs. The men sense her drug, they talk to her in slurs and mutters and she laughs and rubs herself and puts her sloppy wet twisted finger into the men's mouths and they lick it and suck it like boys with lollipops and she owns them like dogs and they will bark and lick each other's arses for a jab of the needle. But they have ideas in them, for they have been speaking in the shit shadows and have a plan that can't fail because they have thought of all the ways that it could fail and have ways to stop that; knife sharp ways to stop anything.

Top floor but not penthouse suites. The sewers are in the sky here because the shit always rises to the top. Hallways with wet walls and cracked floors are both the bedrooms of crack addicts and haunts of the electric piss wizards. Slaves of the skag cling to one another like ants, they crawl over each other and would bite out their own tongues if it meant a slurp of a skag needle or a suck of a weed pipe. Money is not the real currency here, payments are made with flesh and favours and deals and do it quick because there are plenty more to take your place and they don't care like you might care. A hundred percent proof vomit flows from constant open mouths, methylated spirit is prayed over. Stale sweat odour and sex stink is in the air, you inhale particles of fetid spunk and spit and shit and ass juice with every breath and you can feel it going down your rotting lungs and then you cough it up in wads. Primal urges play out in the hallways atop the towers. Purple smeg cocks in soiled cunts for a fix. Men grinding up in men, shoving their dicks into freshly wiped assholes whilst jerking off another skeletal warrior all for a smoke of devil grass or sniff of glue or a crushed up Demerol or a bottle of the pink fire water. Salty spunk covers the walls and floors and chests and faces and it mattes hair to a dull sheen. Hallways of dark light pass by; beige walls wet with moss, inhale the spores, and cough up the blood of youth. Door to her flat is open and is never closed; it's not her flat but many others and the ceiling lights flicker in dim harmonies that scream in the minds of those on the nod and strobe crimson wasps articulate thoughts of the monkeys you are trying to ditch. Bodies decorate the floors and piss is walked though like a reverse cleansing. Using shit someone has smeared _Skag is Life_ on the living room wall and beneath that is written _Katies Kunt Kan Kill_ using both blood and shit. The television is on, flickering the broken tubes mindless warped bullshit to the unwitting crowd. They suck it up through their wide black eyes. Woman and men find a space on the floor and belts are wrapped around arms and rubber tubes are tied around thighs to find the vein. The ancient spikers dig the needle into the backs of their thighs, the soft flesh of the foot is a vein highway. Rock is turned to liquid and shot into veins. Powder is mixed with liquid. Man uses a razorblade to slice a hole in his wrist and drips hot liquid into gash and he falls to the floor laughing like the hysterically mad rabbits of an author's dream. Woman finds her bedroom is hot as hell and the warped walls deteriorate into cracked nightmares where faces poke through to wish you well and to see you off into the next life. Her skag packet is taken away but her mind sees nothing but the dolly in the corner which cries and asks her where her mummy has gone. Woman has no skag and fresh sores spit blood into her mouth and the itch runs up her skin causing sensual nails to pierce her brain and she screams at them to stop and she sprays fly spray all over her to get rid of the aphids that run up and down her cratered skin. She prays to anything for the bugs to stop, it's a repetitive damage driven creed which no one listens to, no one gives a shit anymore, and besides, the woman's body may be full of skag but it still has what the men yearn for. So the woman is fucked in her scab hole and they let her smoke the pipe or drink the pink death liquid and they all swim away on a grimy magic carpet with bed bugs crawling up their skin into their foaming mouths. She forgets that she had a packet all to herself and thinks she needs to open herself up to get something to take the memories of her dead child away. Her hole seeps fetid ejaculation. Men fuck her, fuck her with rotten dicks and dirty fingers and they thrust fists up inside of her and use the blood as further lubricant. It matters not to them, she is there, and so are they. A woman joins them, crying and wailing like a witch fucking Jesus, and she has a rolling-pin caked in shit and she lifts the woman's thin paper legs to pound her tight torn brown arsehole and she finds no resistance there or any such resistance in the hanging slit of a cunt that has been ripped open like a paper bag. The resistance has gone as the woman has stopped resisting death. Her last word was Mother but it was lost in the contorted crack minds of the tower dwellers. Her being dead doesn't stop the men from carrying on and finishing themselves off inside of her, over her, over their own hands shaking with H-jives.

But finally the woman has found her way out. She has made it through, somehow, to the other side, where the drugs won't work. Others will follow in an endless stream, young and old alike, it's a conveyer belt of lost souls and their arms are pricked and their eyes are sunken like their hopes and their dreams.

The woman is slammed into the lift and it carries her down

It carries her down....

...It carries her down...

...She is dragged out onto the street, coroner lifts her body up into the black bag and then they are away in the van, soon to be ash for the daffodils, and nobody asks questions or cares for that matter because even the road sweepers keep away from the Triangle.

# little extra won't hurt

Paul stuffs the money in his back pocket, watches Craig as he crosses the road and goes into the corner shop. Paul closes the gate to the rubble yard and padlocks it shut. He sneezes, snorts, and spits out a wad of phlegm onto the floor where it skips across the ground like a skipping stone on a flat pond. His head is hurting, it's been two days since his last fix, and he can feel his body melting into the pavement. He grinds his teeth and they are sticky from the cola and they itch now that he is thinking of his fix and the fixer, his gums feel as if they are being peeled back and his tongue races around his mouth like a sickly worm. He can't remember a time when he has felt this bad, come to think of it, he can't remember a time he has ever felt anything that isnt numb.

A man approaches from his left; the sun blocked out by him, but by the way in which he walks Paul knows who it is, Alright there George?

George is all kneecaps and front teeth, fat knuckles and big eyebrows, and he speaks slowly so that his mind can keep up with his words. George is liked by everyone because he is stupid. George likes everyone because he knows no better. His old man had been a hitter, a really good one.

Not bad, Paul, not bad.

What you up to?

Popping over to see the Pharmacist. You?

George smiles a toothless smile and the stench of his rotted gums makes Pauls eyes water, Same, mum gave me some money to buy food with. She's half shot full of Demerol and Ketamine so aint got a clue what's going on. Had it all herself didn't she though, didn't let me have none so the money I'm going to use to get me some H. I need a fix, been a week since my last big one. Had to vapour up bleach the last two days just to get through it.

Paul sucks in air through his crooked teeth, Vaporing don't do you no good. Rots out the bit of you that gives the rush, man. I've been dry for two days but I can't go on. If it got that bad you could have gone up the Towers.

Fuck off, I ain that desperate. They're rotten as fuck up there and their eyes is all fucked up coz of the light plus I didn't have the money or anything else to give them.

The two men watch Craig leave the shop and hear the bell clatter to the floor.

You been working with him today? George scratches his arse and sniffs his finger and Paul watches with a lemon sucking face, Yep, been working with him for a few days. Work is shit but I aint moaning as it pays and I need the money. Something is up with him though, I gotta feeling he is going to cause some trouble tonight. Let's get over there before the good stuffs gone and his prices double.

Both men walk across the road, George scuffing his trainers with every step. The sun is sinking slowly somewhere behind the towers. As they near the alleyway the sounds of the Triangle increase, voices and screams and laughter and shouting and squeaking gates and moped engines. Outside the alleyway a woman they know but don't speak to stumbles past, spitting out a mouth full of spunk to the floor laughing to herself. She mutters something, laughs at her own reflection and makes her hands into a butterfly and flaps it up the walls.

Paul watches her and checks out her arse, Guess he's still back there. Aint going to be long before we hear she's dead, he says pointing her out with a nod of his head, Shit, I went to school with her, she was proper fit back then. Proper switched on too. Look at her now, fucking skank. Still would stick it to her though.

The alleyway, fresh stench of piss and cider and tramp sweat fills the air.

If it aint my two best buyers. How ya doing Paul? You alright there George? Pharmacist is a well-dressed man. Dark blue pin stripe suit, fitted and sleek, and glistening in the fading light. He has a sharp look about him, straight faced razor jawed with narrow eyes that burn paint from the walls. George and Paul don't answer, just nod and smile and they each take out a twenty from their respective pockets. Pharmacist stands under a lamp that hangs from the back of the Café and he brushes down his trousers, he runs his hand through his thinning hair and looks at the money and then at the two men. He grimaces, doesn't realise he is doing it, You boys in the market are ya? Bit of H is it. Looks like you need it, both of ya are gurning like a couple of right fucktards. I got a bit left. Enough for the two of you but how's about a bit a little whizz too, got packets of the stuff. Can't shift it these days except to the faggots down the clubs, then as a whisper he says, Yaknow they use it to loosen up their arseholes, right, so that the cocks don't make their tight arses bleed. Fuckin gross if you ask me but hey, they pay, I supply. But I got loads of it. Need to shift it. Cheap rush, keep yagoing for a few days if you need a fix, helps out with that rise and fall.

Paul shakes his head, Just the usual for me, and George mimics Paul and Pharmacist chuckles to himself, Ahhhhh, come on fellas, tell ya what, smearing a finger across his nose, sniffing and winking, You boys give me thirty quid and I'll give ya a twenties worth of rock and another twenties worth of whizz. What ya say to that, hey? twitching from foot to foot and Pharmacist can't keep his fingers from flicking and plucking at thin air.

What we want whizz for? We aint no queers.

George stands still, looking down and itching his arms with yellowing nails. His skin is pale, blue veins poke out. Pharmacist places his hands on the two men's shoulders, I aint telling ya to use it am I. Sell it on. Those lot up the top will buy it. Girls will probably let yafuckem I guess, Pharmacist takes a step back and put his hands into his trouser pockets, underneath the material you can still see his fingers twitching.

Paul licks his lips, Whatcha think George?

Whatever, man. I got the money and I like the sound of selling it on.

Finally get yourself some pussy too. Give that right wrist a rest, hey, and Pharmacist says that because everybody knows what George lies about. Fuck you. What the fuck you know about it, George mumbles and takes a step toward the dealer, his trainers stepping in a puddle of greasy dishwater. He is a strong guy is George, and has a short fuse, a combination that will one day end his days and Pharmacist raises his hands into the air, Alright, calm down. Just a joke is all. Jesus you on a hype drug or something. He looks over to Paul, What you say then, Paul. It's a no brainer, surely. Bit of the sweet stuff for you and then some extra pennies and a fuck with a skank. What more could you ask for from thirty quid?

Yeah, go on then. But shits good right. Not cut with anything.

Pretend I didn't hear that last bit there, Paul. I aint no shitty half cutter and I don't like to be accused of it neither. You is a good lad but any more of that shitsturring and I shall get the lads to beat the fuck out of you.

No apology was given and two packets were handed out to each of them. Money is exchanged and then Paul and George head out of the alleyway and toward the Triangle.

Pharmacist waves them goodbye, See you guys on the flip side, and eyes the sky as he says it. Pharmacist sniffs, smears a finger across his nose, and smiles a crocked smile. He sucks on a cracked tooth at the back of his jaw and it stings something wicked and he winces at the pain. Pharmacist reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out his phone. Finding the correct contact he presses the dial button and waits for him to answer.

Alright, pal. Can you talk? Sold the overs. All of it. Gone.........Yeah pal, sold the lot. Made us some good money on that shit.........Course no one suspected. I aint that type of guy. They know I don't cut shit with nothing......... Yeah of course I did............What I cut it with? Fuck knows, pal. Some white shit I found in the back of the caretakers shed. Don't know what it's gonna do to em. There's so much of this stuff floating about that it aint gonna come back on us. No one gives a shit about these cunts anyway......... Yeah, fucking nonces. Anyway, see ya tonight. Take care pal, and Pharmacist tucks his phone away.

Feeling the inside of his suit jacket he smirks and calls it a night. He walks to his car which is parked around the corner under the shade of a dead tree and the tower blocks watch him as he goes and they sink lower into the heroin waters he has created. A wallet bulges from his trouser pocket like a cash flow erection and he pads it soothingly as he opens the car door. The cars a rental, solid built, seats four, rented with fake ID but real money, handshakes filled with pills were all that was needed. He drives away, slipping a bright blue pill under his clever tongue. He will wait for an hour and then the world will start to fade to green. Driving down the road, passed the corner shop, the café, and then the pub filled with alcoholic nothings shoving golden liquid down their necks, he turns and sees the tramp from the alleyway up ahead. The tramp is on all fours, scratching at the road, trying to rip it up it seems but failing miserably and his hands are red. Pharmacist honks his horn but the tramp doesn't look up. Pharmacist doesn't slow. The horn is honked again and this is a single lane and there is nowhere to go but straight ahead. Then the tramp looks up, eyes bright with the glare of the headlights, his face that of a twisted grinning clown.

Pharmacist yells, Get out the fucking way, from his open window and in doing so he swallows the pill meant for sucking and in doing so he punches the steering wheel because that was a fucking waste of a good pill, Fuck it, he sneers, and all of a sudden Pharmacist hates whoever it is that is in the road so he honks the horn again and again until the world is drowned out by it and this time the tramp either hears the car coming or the cars horn and tries to stand but cant and now the distance between them is so small that the Pharmacist can see the toothless smile and the pussing vein arms and the tramp throws himself away from the speeding car. But the tramp moves too slowly, and the car clips the back of his head snapping his neck and sending blood in splatters from his mouth onto the greying tarmac.

Pharmacist doesn't stop.

He looks behind using the rear view mirror and laughs as the body of the tramp lands on the floor, a gnarled lump for the foxes to find because the police don't give two shits about this place.

He keeps his foot down, heading into the city, singing along to Backdoor Man by The Doors. He gets most of the words wrong.

#  the cut stuff

A tramp watches the Pharmacist go, his hands shaking the open can of beer he holds until it froths and soaks into his filthy trousers, so to others it looks as though he has pissed himself. Distant voices echo inside the sub structure of a world that he does not belong to anymore. Head swimming from synthesised sugar fermented in womb juice and steel blood buckets. Numb from everything and to everything. Wants to piece things together but really couldn't give a shit. The packet of white powder he purchased gripped tight in his left hand, white knuckles and hairy fingers caress the plastic carrier. The tramp, who has been named Peter buy his mother and his father but now goes by no name because he is no one, had listened to the man in the blue suit as he talked into the plastic telephone thing and he could see purple rotten cancer cells pass from phone to ear. Some of the words he understood, others he ignored. He had handed over a few quid for the stuff in the packet. He opens the packet and sniffs the contents and can smell nothing but his own stink. Using the crumpled cardboard he begs with as a base, he splashes the powder onto it, piles it up into little line mounds of snow and sniffs up the three cloud lines sighing after he takes the last one and closes his bone yellow eyes shutting out the shifting liquid world he diseases with every breath. His chest heaves, sending waves of jagged glass through his body, and slicing down into his feet. He is marching now into the sea. He wiggles his toes in his decaying boots. Gritted hands take hold of his throat, knives stab and hack at his skin, and needles are shoved into his demented eyes. Dribble rolls down his chin and he pisses himself but laughs when he sees the liquid seep out around him. Vile brown liquid vaporising into ozone fit for drain lovers. Standing, rotten crooked legs splayed apart like a bronzed statue, he kicks out at a rat that scurries passed him and misses. Fucking ratcunt, he wheezes, and leaves his stuff where it is. He stumbles out of the alleyway into the misbegotten world where the night creatures are coming alive and some of those insect creatures itch and tickle his skin like nasty fairies. They fly through the sky, blackened death carrion from the depths of the underworld screaming white noise, with sweet fairy wings these venereal sounds seep into his ears and he listens watchfully. He will wither slowly as the moon rises and will crawl on all fours as the white powder dissolves into his blood, curdling it like a green egg. He thinks he is a dog, then a man wolf mutation that needs to eat meat decorated with iron rocks scrounged from the bitch earth. Tramp has a faith in God but that doesn't help things as the life is hacked from him, and the God that doesn't care angles his cock down at him and pisses acid upon his bare flesh. The powder is clear now that it is in his blood stream, but bits of the cut stuff refuse to dissolve and edge closer and closer to their station and he can feel them, their little fingers in his veins grabbing and pulling at his arteries trying to get to where they need to be, trying to catch a bus that left long ago. The powder and the cut stuff are choking the memories that were inside of him, fucking the life behind his eyes, raising questions that were a mockery to his own nothing existence. He careens through streets of rubbish and fallen angels and God speaks to him and laughs and God's spittle slashes against his face. He speaks with God and he laughs. Night time dreamtime and all things crimson coloured burnished in eyes that blink through drifting planets in a stupefied universe. Edging closer to awakening and fuck the consequences. Edging closer to God and lets rim the divine arsehole for want of more. Bright lights and the horned bleating's of the angel that calls for him. Earth doesn't want to give up the nutrition and black insect eyes close in around him and they point their clawed carapaces at him. Putrid pleasant angel horn blasting in wax gripped ears swing his floppy head into the suns high beams. He sees it coming, God's chariot, he stands to welcome it with open arms and veins reaching to the sky and his eyes are on stalks and they see everything though nothing can be processed. Crimson worlds come to take him away. But not yet, for then he sees the baby fox in the folds of the earth and the baby fox is dying and needs milk. Milk from his hairy spunk sack, so he lunges from God's ferocious chariot toward the fox. Wave of thunderous pain in his crown, shattering the spinal column that is the source of life. Then nothing but sweetness and love. He is released into the bright blue yonder, but his body will be left to rot and become carrion for the foxes and the maggots.

In the distance a man sings along to a song but gets most of the words wrong.

#

# penthouse crack

The chemicals keep the people sedated, keeps them controlled, an illegal police force with no need of Tasers and guns and truncheons. The violence is contained because of those chemicals, perhaps the world is a better place because the people can escape, though they stay in the same place and don't go anywhere. Chemical vacation.

From behind closed windows people stare as Paul walks by, and although no one is stood behind those windows, to Paul there is people are looking at him, they make his skin crawl with their persistent stares, and he knows that it is the chemicals that is doing that to him, but he forgets that, and he feels crowded and pressured and itchy and there are flies buzzing all around him, stupid fucking flies all around him.

The heroin is in him now, boiled up syrup thickens the blood and pumps with a frenzy so that everything that is in him and around his body goes all the way up into his brain where it festers and digs deep and won't let go with its invisible talons. His body is living with it, a junkie's body capable of carrying the heavy chemical burden even with a frail frame and crippled bones with poor foundations. A modern miracle.

Under the constant shadow of the towers George walks next to him with his head low and his fingers fiddling the air like a conductor for a tiny orchestra that only he can see and hear. Sometimes Paul would like to be able to hear that music so he can join in too. George's body is living with junk, though his body grew quickly accustomed, so now he takes Ketamine as a supplement much like a fitness freak would take vitamins to help sustain their fetish. George's feet scuff as he walks, left foot trailing slightly behind like a slow dog on a loose leash and that really fucking annoys Paul, but right now the junkie hug has him and he couldn't give a shit.

They both laugh and point at rolling rubbish that looks like those weird tumbling weeds in the deserts of America. They stare at a cat with three legs as it hops along a low defaced wall that is half shadow and half on fire with sunlight. Waves from friends, nods from others who can see the gratified smiles of the junkies as they meander from path to path, lamppost to lamppost.

They sit on fractured pavement slabs outside of Chestnut Tower, George picking his nose and scratching at scabs and merging the two together and rolling them into a green slime ball with his fingers whilst Paul rolls a fag with nervous shaking hands and a deep furrowed brow. Paul starts to sweat and becomes itchy but he can't scratch it because his hands are full and George just watches and rolls up the bogeyscab and flicks then it into the air.

George mumbles, Could do with some money, whilst he watches Paul try and form a roll up with his shaking hands and he thinks to himself what a pathetic attempt it is and he knows he can do a better job even though he has never rolled a cigarette in his life.

So could we all, George. Know where any is? And George sniffs out a laugh, Nope. Even doll money aint what it used to be. Asking too many questions now. Want to know what I'm doing to help get a job. What C.V's I've sent out and to who and what work I want and trying to set up interviews and they hand me bits of paper with jobs and addresses ritonit. I smile the same smile at the douche behind the desk and say thanks and say that I will cross my fingers and he knows what I know and then I just chuck those bits apaper in the bin outside coz what chance have I got against those collar and tie fuckers? What chance have I got against those knowitall fucking pricks and the immigrants with their bullshit degrees?

Paul licks the end of the fag and copies the sentiment, Fucking pricks, and he lights the fag with a match. He spits a bit of tobacco onto the floor and watches as the wind carries it away. I suppose we could sell the speed, might get us some notes, or a handjob if they aint got no money, and Paul cranes his neck so to see the sky. The sun is behind the tower, like it always is and always will be until the concrete rots away to dust and these bastard places fall, and he can't tilt his head back far enough to see where the towers end and the sky begins. He offers the roll up to George who refuses it and in silence he finishes the fag, savouring each puff as he sucks on it and that makes him think of someone.

You should go and see Beth.

Who?

Yaknow, her with the big tits, she gives a mean blowjob.

Yeah but she's pricey and I aint got that kindamoney.

Suppose so, anyways, I aint seen her for a few days, she aint been round the back of Gwen's for a while, maybe she's gone away.

Yeah maybe, dunknow.

People pass by as they sit on the pavement. They pass on by.

Three boys with dirty faces and carrying a tatty football are amongst them and they laugh at something as they walk passed heading for the towers entrance. Paul looks at them and acting like the big man he couldn't be when Craig is around he throws a rock at one of them, misses, What you little cunts laughing at? You see something funny, do ya? and none of kids look at Paul, just keep on moving quicker than before, but Paul can see the sniggers on the sides of their dirty faces and he really wants one of them to turn around so that he can go at them with his fists and his feet. He watches them get into one of the lifts and as the doors close one of the boys, who has a shaven head and a plaster on his cheek, sticks up his middle finger with a ferocious glee. Paul raises his own but it's too late for them to see, Little shits, and George parrots him, including the finger, though he doesn't really know why as he had been nodding for a couple of minutes, the ketamine had kicked in now, and his eyes are drooping, pouring out if his face, his remaining teeth grind together like stones in a mill. Nodding. What a heroic pastime that is.

A cool wind whips around them, stinking of old meat and stale rubbish. The rumble of the bus as it drives in from the city greets the two men sat on the dirty floor. Then brakes howl and Paul can picture people getting off, then the bus drones away, engine revving hard trying to get out of here. Around and around that bus goes, into the city, out of the city and always it comes here to pick up and drop off.

A small throng of people enters the Triangle, suits, work wear clinging to hot sweaty bodies and they all keep their heads down against the weight of the towers. They split into faction's dependant on where they live and back packs shift from shoulder to shoulder whilst handbags are gripped tighter as they walk passed open doors and sunken human forms, and their eyes shift like a junkies eyes do but these folk don't take the needle because they need to work. These people feel like herded cattle walking through packs of lions. They know they are hunted, hated, and none of them are foreign but are accused of being dirty immigrants and stealers of jobs but they don't want to lounge about and weren't content with doing nothing and getting paid well to do so, not that they thought any less of those that did and do nothing, but it's nice to work for something.

Pauls eyes narrow and his mouth chews grit, Look at those fuckers over there, he sucks the last bit of life from his roll up before flicking it into the road and George looks but doesn't say anything, just scratches the back of his head to get the burrowing germs away that he is sure are there because all he can think of since meeting with the Pharmacist is handjobs. George wants a handjob, he's seen the pictures and the movies and has done it too himself and would love it if someone else other than his mother would do it to him.

All of em working like bees and getting fuck all for it, Paul continues, unaware that all George wants is a handjob from a skank and George stands up and sticks his middle finger up at the worker folk, Fucking foreigners, stoopid immigrants taking our jobs and our fucking money. This is our country and they should all fuck off back to where they came from, and he says this because he knows that is what Paul was thinking and hopes that now that he has said it Paul won't have to because he wants a handjob and he edges closer to the sliding door that is perpetually open not able to get the image of a skank jerking him off out of his fizzing melting brain. His balls tighten as if to spit out their liquid and he gets tetchy and wants to go and has to adjust his balls and hardening cock in his dirty fraying jeans.

Your right there, George, coming over here and taking our jobs whilst we have to scrape a quid from the Government. I bet they sit up in their flats and look down on us and they laugh as they eat their fancy dinners and watch their fancy fucking movies drinking wine from tall glasses whilst we eat the frozen shit. Most of em live on the sunny side away from the cold and the shadows. I tell ya, George, I fuckin hate em, hate em all. One day it's going to change, Paul had drifted off again, took a little nod into a future where his retribution is lord and Hillside doesn't tolerate the foreigners no more and he lives on the sunny side and the sun is so bright that his eyes narrow and stay like that, he is almost blinded by the suns light.

But George still wants a handjob, Can we sell some of this shit, like now or what?

Paul spits as one of the workers walks by and his deodorant is strong and sweet and his work shoes shine in the shadow of the tower and the spit narrowly misses the man and the man keeps on going but now a little faster than he was going and Paul watches him go and wishes that the man would turn around and say something so that he could then go at him with his fists and his feet until the man aint nothing but a pool of his own fancy shit and piss. He'd like to pull their arms outtatheirsockets and then beat them all to death with them.

But all George wants is a handjob and he is fed up with standing here, Come on Paul, let's go, I'm getting an itch stood out here.

Alright, alright. Fuckme man, you must be well desperate for a fuck, Christ, and both men enter Pine Tower and catch the lift to the top floor, which aint no penthouse suite, and when the lift door squeals open they are blinded by the sun as it pours through the murky lobby windows. It's so bright, a fire reflected fire. There are junkies and alcoholics and paedophiles and queers and dealers and takers and pushers and pullers and killers and maniacs and losers and dead lovers all hidden in that sunshine, but for a few seconds neither man see them and so just stand there oblivious to the world they won't get away from and they are mesmerized by the yellow white disk of life that has engulfed their world.

And then their eyes become accustomed to the bright white light and they finally get to see the shit that has drifted up river.

#

# broken mirror

Beth has tits the guys die for. She knows it, they all know it, and when Beth thought of everyone that loved her tits she had to include her father and that sickened her a little bit, but hey, what the hell. Well, that's what she used to think. Now she thought different.

Her father had worked in the docks, been there since he had turned sixteen, and was one of the good guys, so everyone said. He turned up on time, worked late, did overtime if the powers that be needed it. He covered for the guys that fucked up, or that were late, or needed an hour to sober up. But then on a grey drizzly Tuesday morning he was crushed between a forklift truck and a wooden pallet. The weight of the forklift snapping his leg into four pieces. And though he returned to work after a long recuperation period and with a belly full of drugs to numb the pain, quickly the pain became too much for him and so he turned to drink whilst still taking the pills.

And then his life went to shit and he started to beat his wife who was a small woman that loved him but wouldn't stand for a beating, and so she left him with an empty flat, red lettered bills, debt up to the arsehole and oh yeah, a daughter aged fourteen who had amazing tits and who had already lost her virginity and then some. He didn't know what to do so he drank, took pills, and festered.

It was at that point that Beth's father could have looked at his life and maybe thought to turn it around. But the drinking got worse, and he got late for work time after time, and his face became sunken and his eyes turned red grey bloodshot dead and he got the shakes and his body oozed a stink that was like stale fermented death. The foreman approached him about his lifestyle and that man had been more a friend than a boss, but the drunk man couldn't see that and though the foreman wanted to help the dad just swung his big fists and broke the foreman's jaw and then all the anger poured out and what was just a broken jaw quickly turned into a smashed skull and a ruptured spleen and five weeks on a hospital bed being fed through straws and tubes and shitting in bags and pissing through a tube. So now dad doesn't work in the docks, he just drinks to keep the pain away and he looks at his daughter but doesn't see her mother, just a girl with great tits and an amazing set of legs and a girl whom he knows is on the game but doesn't care because it helps him pay for his drink.

He secretly wants to fuck her. Most of the time he doesn't have the energy.

Beth knows she is a girl full of misconceptions. She knows that her role as a prostitute means that she shouldn't have a mind of her own. But Beth is different, at least to her she is. She likes to read, she enjoys poetry and wants nothing more than to have a library full of books. The music she listens to may seem weird to others but she likes it because she doesn't share the same filtered upbringing as them. She shares a joke with her mates and then tells those jokes to the guys that grind away on top of her but they don't laugh because their sole purpose at that point is not to come too early and ruin the opportunity to chuck one up the girl with amazing tits and Beth doesn't mind that because they still pay her. Maybe she would like a conversation once in a while, but for now she just has to open up, put up, and shut up.

School was over for Beth, her friends were contemplating having kids, trapping some poor bastard and then draining him dry. Summer was here, she had read song lyrics that told her that this was going to be her summer, her time to blossom and her time to find herself and fuck what the world wanted her to do, fuck what the world wanted her to be, and fuck what the world wanted her to listen to and fuck what the world wanted her to read and how to speak and how to act and where to go and how to get there. Fuck it and them.

No, this was her time, and she would be happy and content and find herself and be all that she had wanted to be and fuckem all. She would stop selling herself, move away somewhere hot that only planes can fly to and there she would have a nice house with white walls and a room that only had books in it and paintings and little trinkets on shelves that got dusty from time to time. A room that was her and hers. She didn't have much money and maybe selling herself here and there might be needed along the way but that didn't seem to matter to her as a few cocks meant a better life; a way out. There was nothing here for her. Nothing. Believing that kept her alive, kept her legs spread when the bruises wanted them shut. She had to believe in it or what was it all for?

So she believed in it.

Then.

But now she didn't.

Eight days ago, on the day she turned sixteen, her father had brutally raped her. Not that she thought that a rape could be anything else but brutal, her friend Kate had been snatched and raped by a man last year and all he did was throw her onto the ground and stick it up her for about thirty seconds until he came and ran away, not that brutal. Beth's, on the other hand, had gone on all night long, from when the sun set to when the birds sang their morning chorus. He had been relentless, insatiable, and none of her seemed to satisfy him despite his best efforts. Her dad had even taken a nap during it, lying next to her on the floor snoring and drooling into the already sweaty and blood soaked carpet and as she lay awake, shaking and bleeding with his semen dripping out of her, she prayed to a god that she knew didn't exist for it to end, to just be over, kill her, end her, end him, end this, end everything, just turn it off and be done with it.

The thoughts of what happened, images of what he had done to her, on her, swam in her mind, him inside of her mostly, they all made her gag, but there was no sick to bring up, just hot stinking air. Beth wrapped her arms around her cold naked chest and the bruises that covered her breasts and her arms and under her arms and on her belly and around her ribs stung and throbbed with a hot pain that seemed to be always there even in her dreams where she hoped to get away from it all but couldn't no matter how much she thought of sweeter times. What she wouldn't give to have been attacked like her friend instead of the way she had been and that was a terrible thought which she regretted straight away.

A tear fell...

...Mum...

but there was no answer, and Beth tried to sit further up on the bed, maybe lay down, and try to drift off, but she couldn't move an inch so she reached down and held her skin together in case the cut on her leg, which wouldn't heal properly, opened up and she bled half to death. Though that would be a blessing; to die, like her idol did when he pulled the trigger of the gun held against his temple and he was released from his demons like she would be released from hers....

....

....

....

....

........She decided to stand and get dressed as she hadn't heard her father for a few hours and so he must have passed out in the front room where she hadn't been for eight days since the attack. She hadn't been naked all that time but to her it felt as if she would always be naked around this house, especially when she was near him. She put nothing fancy on, just her PJ's, so that she wouldn't have to look at herself anymore in the mirror that she had smashed with a thrown book. As she dressed she tried not to look in the mirror but couldn't help herself, and she touched herself where the cuts and bruises were and where before all this she would have touched herself to get herself off or to get others off, but now those places were sour and she touched them carefully, she winced with pain, and there was no joy there now, just a bleakness, a numbness that she believed would never go away and she would be just a shell, a robot, a robot with holes that men still wanted to fuck, a robot with eyes that could still cry....

Mum, but still no answer, I need you.

When dressed she sat on the edge of her bed and looked at her CD's and her posters and the song lyrics she had written on her wardrobe and all of it seems so much like bullshit now that she spat at it and was full of hate at everything she had ever liked, loved, thought done or thought of doing. There was nowhere to go, there was nothing to look forward to now, and she had stopped believing.

And as her harsh nicotine voice floated around the room like smoke, her bedroom door opened and her dad was stood in the doorway swaying like a rotten pendulum. Up until that point she hadn't seen him since the night he'd attacked her.

In the doorway he was a silhouette, not a man or a ghost or a shadow. Beth could tell he was drunk because nobody sober could sway that much.

Please, she whimpers, Leave me alone, and he waves her words away and laughs, I aint gonna touch ya no more, and he said that with such contempt that it hurt Beth more than she thought because no man had never said that they didn't want to fuck her.

He moved away from the shadows and into the light and he looked so fragile in just shorts and socks. How had she not pushed him off, stopped him from tying her hands to the bed and strapping her down? Why hadn't she just chewed off his tongue as he forced it in her mouth? Why hadn't she just bit his stinking cock off when he jammed it in her mouth and made her suck it until he came down her throat? But the answer to that was simple, and she felt just as weak now as she did when he had attacked her, and the strap marks around her legs and on her buttocks screamed with pain as if they sensed the beast that did it to them and the marks around her feet where the plastic ties had been wrapped bled onto the dirty carpet where he had slept and she had, and still does, cry into.

Get on the bed, now, and the man sniffs and looks at her with nothing in his eyes but hatred and disgust. Beth wants to ask why and he sees this, Just get on the bed and shut your fucking mouth and do as yer told for once in yer life would ya. Beth does as she's told and the room grows cold even though beads of sweat drip down her face and she stares up at the ceiling, shaking, trying not to think but doing it anyway.

Take down yer PJ's.

I don't want to.

Take em off or I will.

Her PJ bottoms start to slide off, slowly, You said you wouldn't, but her dad grabs hold of them and rips them down and a bit of the scab on the big cut on her leg tears off and she hisses as the pain shoots up her. But he doesn't care, I aint, but I can't have you being pregnant.

Beth tries to cry but nothing comes out and then she is aware of another man in the room and she looks over without moving her head and she knows that man, his name is Vince, she knows how his cock tastes and knows how he likes his arsehole tickled whilst he comes over her tits and she knows that he has two kids with two different women. Vince looks at her like her father does and she wants to get off the bed but she can't, her body won't let her.

Her dad looks at Vince, You got the thing?

Yeah I got it, Vince takes out a small plastic thing that looks like a toothbrush, and he moves toward her with it. His hands are shaking.

Piss on it.

What?

Beth's dad leans over her, blocking the light from her pathetic light bulb, Piss on the tester, Beth, and now she can feel the cold plastic thing touching her vagina and she squirms but down there is so sore it hurts and the muscles are so used up nothing twitches or moves and is still.

I can't.

Yes you can.

I can't. I can't. I can't do it, please, I can't do it, just go, I'll do it on my own, please, get it away, get him away, I can do it, I promise.... I ca... Then a hand is around her throat, not tight, but tight enough to widen her eyes and make it hard for her to breathe, and if she could Beth would have jerked away but she's all used up, Just do it or I'll squeeze it out of ya, you got that.

There is a quiet moment in the room.

Then it is broken.

Arshitfuckinghell Chris, she's pissing all over me hand, there's loads of it.

Just make sure its covering the stick, and the hand around her throat loosens and her dad looks over down between her legs and watches as the piss covers the stick and the hand holding it and he wants to laugh at Chris but doesn't, only sniggers.

Beth stops urinating and her legs are wet and when she sees Vince move away, grasping the pregnancy test like it were a fucking golden idol, she closes her legs and she is repulsed by the wetness of the sheets and the stink of her own piss as it drifts up her nose and down her burning throat.

Fly away, Beth, she says in whispers, but miracles aren't welcome here and the god she prays to doesn't answer. Shock.

Well, what does it say?

Two lines.

What the fuck does that mean?

She's pregnant.

Arfuckingshit, I fucking knew it, stupid cunt, and her dad goes to hit her and then thinks twice and kicks the wardrobe and bits of glass fall to the floor and now Beth does cry because all of sudden she is sickeningly aware of what is going to happen to her but to move is futile, her body defies her again and she can't get up no matter how hard she tries.

Well, whatdoya want me to do?

Her dad rubs his dirty chin and the sound of his hand on the three day old stubble is like a thousand arms being scrapped along a brick wall. Get rid of it, said with a cold heart and Beth screams but no one in the room gives a shit.

Vince does what he was shown to do by his father on the day that his sister lost an incest child. Vince is sick as he does it, her dad is too, and the room stinks of blood and vomit and sweat and tears and then darkness, release........dreams....

....

....

....

........Beth comes around. The outside world is dark. She rolls off of the bed and lands in the blood and the vomit. Not caring, she rolls through it so that she can be near the broken pieces of mirror and the bloody lump of towels and tissues on the floor which she supposes is the bits of her that were taken out.

She doesn't want to go on anymore. Those dreams of telling the world to go fuck itself are now gone. Taken. The world has told her to go fuck herself, God has finally answered.

With a shard of broken glass she flies away.

# bleach

Kirsty stops wiping down the worktop when she spies a little set of fingerprints left there by her son who is named after his long gone father, Wash your hands before school Jack, and whenever she says that name it reminds her of him and she regrets that choice made fourteen years ago when the world was rose tinted and all of time was stretched out like taught elastic. Back then she didn't know that husband Jack was going to be like what he turned out to be. So now she did everything she could do to stop little Jack turning out like big Jack. It was hard work, but it needed to be done. Had to be done. Both of their futures depended on it.

She hears her son leave his room and into the bathroom and then taps turn on, there is the sound of water on skin and soap rubbing on skin, and then more water on skin and finally taps are turned off and hands are wiped on the towel which will now have to be washed as she can't stand the thought of a wet towel stinking up the place. Kirsty throws the used cleaning wipe into the bin and she surveys the kitchen and is happy for the time being, not only with the cleanliness of her little world, but also that her son won't be going to school a scruffy little brat like all the others. An image of her growing up in a black and grey stink flat with her vodka loving mother flashes in her head and she quickly wipes it away with a hand across her eyes.

Kirsty lives on the sunny side of the tower so her kitchen is bright and hers is brighter than all of her friends because she cleans it at least twice a day and this she does because she has to and because she wants to and because she won't succumb to this place. She won't let the grime dirty her flat, her life, their life. They may be under already, deep into the poverty hole, but she won't be dragged down with the rest of them. Not like big Jack and the rest of the scum that live here. No, Kirsty learnt her lesson, learnt it well, and now she dusts and hoovers and wipes and washes and scrubs and teaches and scolds until her hands are red raw and her back aches and her nose is burning from the cleaning fluids she constantly inhales and her son is filled with the worlds rights and wrongs and what to do and what not to do's.

Where's my bag?

In the hallway where it always is, and she makes sure it is there every morning; she packs it herself so that she can be sure that what he takes to school is what he is supposed to take, and what he comes home from school with is what he is supposed to come home with. She had a brother and so knows all the tricks, and she shakes her head because she did some of those tricks before the accident, before she had to climb out of the bottle, I've put your lunch in there and made sure you have the right books for your lessons.

Thanks, And little Jack goes back into his room to no doubt put on his shoes and put on his tie which he always leaves till last and Kirsty stands in her clean kitchen just to make sure it is spotless and is pleased that she does this as she notices a blemish on the toaster, so goes at it with another cleaning wipe, and when that one is done with she throws it into the bin amongst all the others.

Marks mum says you should buy shares in those things.

Yeah, maybe, and when I do I could give some to Marks mum and maybe she could clean up her place a bit more, They both smile but his seems forced and she knows that he is becoming a man, that he is going through the quick change all teenage boys go through.

See you after school.

But it's early. Yeah, but I said I'd meet Mark and Connor for a kick about before the bus gets there.

Kirsty looks at Jack and her eyes tell him that she knows everything and will weed out the lie if there is one, and Jack looks back at her and he is twitchy and hops from foot to foot because he wants to go and all Kirsty can see are the eyes of his father and so she looks away, she has to trust her son who hasn't yet put a foot out of place but soon will because the change is coming and she has seen what that change does to sweet little boys.

I'm not going to be like them, mum. I promise. I do well at school and I put up with it here and know that one day it will be better for me and you and I don't want to muck that up. My friends aint like the others either, we have a laugh and we see the junkies and the alkies and we don't want to be like them.

Give me a kiss. And he goes over to his mum and pecks her on the lips and she adjusts his tie and she is proud of her little Jack because he isn't like the other boys who are dirty foul mouthed little shits who smoke and bully and fight and tease and do all the things boys going through the change do which Kirsty doesn't want her boy to do. And all those things that she doesn't want him to do can turn into bigger things given half a chance and so she cleans and she pampers and she protects like a lioness because she will not give that rotten half a chance to succeed. She will never let him be like his bastard father.

She holds him by the wrist and caresses his cheek and one day she won't be able to do that because he will have stubble and he will be a man and she would've been replaced by another woman, Have a good day. I will, see yaafter school. Jack smiles and runs off and collects his bag and then he is gone and the flat on the twelfth floor is quiet except for the sound of the wind against the windows and the thudding of the neighbours which Kirsty doesn't hear because she and all the others that live in the blocks are used to it.

Her front room is just as clean as the kitchen but the view isn't and even though she has told herself time and time again that she must not look she can't help but peer out of the window and watch her son as he does that god awful gangster shake and half hug to his two friends and then she watches them run off kicking a football.

And even though she is alone in the flat, and will be up until about four when Jack gets back home, now that Kirsty can't see him she feels really alone and places her forehead up against the cold glass and closes her eyes and thinks of nothing but what she can do to keep him away from trouble and prays that he can stay out of trouble for just a few more months until they are able to move out.

Then she remembers that the hoovering needs doing even though she had done it the day before and the day before that. With closed eyes she is sure she can see the dirt that lies beneath.

By eleven the flat sparkles and the floor is spotless and the carpet is clean and the flat smells of a thousand different blends of bleach. Kirsty sits in her kitchen and reads the magazine she has read twice already but can't be replaced as each penny is priceless and will be until she has saved enough and can get her and her little Jack out of here. The magazine has pretty pictures of trees and gardens and barbeques, summer living in the middle class houses where the world seems a brighter place, made even brighter by the glossy pictures. She would give anything to live there, to be a mother there. Paper dreams.

#

# wild boys

Jack presses the button to the ground floor and looks down to see that he is stood in a wet patch and so moves to the side as a stink of cleaning fluid and vomit drifts up his nose. Fucking filthy cunt, the doors close and he giggles at what kind of a face his mum would pull if she heard him say stuff like that, Cunt, cunt, pricking cunt, Under his breath which makes him giggle some more and the lift starts moving down and down and he hopes that it doesn't open on the way down because he doesn't want anyone to think that he was the one that was sick in here or the one that stinks for that matter.

The lift judders its way down from the twelfth floor and stops with a metallic crunch and the doors open and Jack steps out; dodging the wet patch of bleach and sick. His mates are going to be waiting for him by the steps and so he walks through the lobby ignoring whoever it is that walks by him stinking of sweat and whiskey.

Connor and Mark are stood waiting by a low brick wall; Mark is fiddling with his tie whilst Connor looks up, Urry up Little Jack. Mark chuckles and wipes away the sleep from his eyes.

Fuck off, don't call me that, Jack hates being called that, hates that his freak of a mother calls him that in front of his mates and that they now know one of his little secrets. The three wild boys stand in a triangle matching the towers that surround them and they greet each other the way in which Jacks mother hates and when they are done with the formality of youth they scamper away and Jack is sure that he can feel the eyes of his mother watching him as he goes and so he hunches over with some unseen weight and watches the concrete patchwork pass underneath him. As she thinks of ways for him to be saved he thinks of ways to be damned.

Connor and Mark walk ahead, they always walk ahead of Jack because they are both taller and stronger and have had fights and both smoke fags as well as joints and have kissed girls and fiddled with tits and Connor reckons he has even fucked a girl; the retard that lives in Pine Towers, and the other wild boys don't think he did but he says he did and he is bigger than most of the others so no one argues with him. Jack wishes he could fight and had the stomach for smoking and for drinking. He is good looking, he knows that, and he knows that not in a vein way like girls think they are hot but in an obvious way because he has heard the girls say it about him, sniggering about his lush hair and big eyes and his sexy smile, and so he should be confident around girls but he isn't and so he wishes to be able to smoke and drink and kiss and fiddle with tits and stick his cock in a fanny instead of a sock. But he can't, and the wishes he makes before he goes to bed return unanswered and he hates himself for doing it. So because of this he knows the only real reason the two bigger boys hang around with him is that he can roll a joint better than anyone they know and that his Uncle is Uncle Jim, and Uncle Jim can get whatever they want; be it weed or drink or porn or fags, Uncle Jim can get it. Legend of the Towers.

The boys who are becoming men don't go to the field to play football, they go into the alleyway that the Pharmacist calls home, and they hunker down in the corner where the day before a skag gave a blow job for a packet of death rock. Mark takes off his backpack and places it in the middle of their camp, he doesn't say anything. Mark is mostly quiet and Jack thinks that is because of Marks dad and how Marks dad likes to kick and throw punches, the drunken piece of fuck. Jack likes Mark, and doesn't care if that friendship isn't returned in words or in the way a traditional friendship is supposed to be because Jack knows that Mark is genuine, would take a kicking, or give a kicking, to help out a mate.

Show him, and Connor kneels down on both knees grinning madly and Jack can see in Connor' eyes such an eagerness for him to like what is in the bag it strikes Jack that he will like it no matter what it is. Mark unzips the tatty back pack and puts his hand in and pulls out a full bottle of something that Jack doesn't recognise and has to peer in closer to take a look.

Mark, you are a fucking legend. Check that out Jack, don't need your fucking Uncle today, whoa!

The bottle looks heavy and the liquid is golden brown sunrise. Mark adjusts the bottle and hands it to Connor and Connor admires it whilst Mark does up the back pack and slides it between his legs.

What is it? And Jack hopes that didn't sound childish because he wants to be like the two bigger boys even though they are only a year older than he is, although to him it feels as if they are ten years older and he will never catch up.

Bourbon, and Connor hands Jack the bottle and the liquid glugs around and Jack feels the weight and feels the metal cap and rubs a finger along the words that have been blown into the glass bottle which is thick like leather. It looks like liquid amber and he smiles and looks at Connor who smiles back and Connor and Jack look at Mark who is smiling but then that smile goes away and he looks scared, Dad will go ape shit when he sees its gone. Don't worry about it, what the fuck he gonna do that he aint already done to ya? And Jack thinks Connor is right, though he wouldn't fancy taking a beating and by the looks of it nor would Mark.

Jack goes to hand the bottle back to Mark but Connor takes it instead. Let's open this bad boy and get jacked and fuck school off for today.

Mark flicks a stone and wipes his dirty hands onto his greying school trousers and he nods and Jack can see that Mark doesn't really want to but will do because at least drunk he won't be able to feel the punches and the kicks. What about you, Jack, you gonna finally have a drink and stop being a pussy?

Jacks throat is full of nails and bile streams up his lungs threatening to come up and he feels this because it is always this same feeling he gets when confronted with drinking. The last time he took a swig of Vodka he brought the whole thing up like a retarded chunk fountain.

Come on, Connor shakes Jacks shoulder and then grips it tight, Time to grow up Little Jack, and Jack swipes away the hand on his shoulder and takes in a deep breath and lets it out and to him by letting out that deep breath he has become a new person, one that can drink and smoke and kiss girls and fiddle with their tits and pull down their panties and stick his cock up their pussy and fight and tell the teachers to go fuck themselves and his mother to go fuck herself too and that he hates everyone and everything except his two pals, his two pals that made him a man and will respect him and stop calling him Little fucking Jack if he gets pissed with them. All he has to do is take a swig, just one......just one......

Yeah.

And the bottle is shared by three boys, three wild boys, three Wild Fucking Boys.

The bus drives by......

......Liquid amber between the three wild boys, first sip is harsh and sour like rotten dirt and then throat numbs and tongue shrivels until nothing can be tasted and so the amber liquid flows freely down necks and into stomach where it festers and drips into blood stream where it travels around the young system like comets on a collision course, it then crashes into the brain and finds a comforting bed. They sit like ancient Indians on the Great Prairie, dark eyes and dark minds. Wild boys laugh and mumble and speak of tits and pussy and girls at school with nice arses that they would like to squeeze and punch and fuck like they see in the movies......

......Jack is quiet, unsure of what to say because he has nothing to say as his cock has only ever felt his hand and the hand of his mother when she cleaned it when he was a baby but he knows what he wants and who he likes and so he tells the others and they laugh and agree and the drink is drank and the minds are swamped and soon the bottle is hurled from Connors hands and smashes against the back door of the shop. Heads are swimming in liquid amber heaven and Jack sees something in his spinning carousel mind......I've seen my fate...... and can't control what he has seen and wants to cry but can't because the tears have all gone and the two other wild boys are on top of him and laughing and drooling and their mouths are as wide as the moon and their eyes like piss holes in faraway snow on some mountain top that would scare Jack..... Do ya wanna be a man, Little Jack? Fuck off, Connor, don't call me that. I'll stop callin you that if you become a man, time to grow up Little Jack, coz I got an idea, and Connor stands and props himself up against the lamppost and he sways like a washing line. Mark watches him and looks at the fragments of glass and then falls to the side and his head hits the concrete hard and vomit seeps from his mouth and there is a stink of shit in the air. Look at that cunt, he's fucking shat himself, and Connor becomes laughter like a tree becomes a door and he looks funny and Jack laughs and after Connor kicks Mark in the stomach Jack follows suite and then sees that Connor wants him to do it again and so he does it again and Mark is out of it so much that he doesn't move or flinch or moan when kicked. Just lies their like the dead boy he is going to be in less than an hour's time......

......Come on, Jack, follow me. And Jack follows Connor, his feet unable to keep to where they are supposed to be going and his head spinning as if connected to an engine that won't run out of fuel no matter how much you push it. They stumble around, giggling their way to Pine Tower, both drunk on everything and no one sees them but everyone sees them but the wild boys do not care and Jack follows Connor into the lobby and stands next to him in the lift watching him as he watches the door and there isn't a word between them now and in that little silent moment Jack starts to love Connor, not in a queer way but in the way Jack would have loved a brother if he had ever had one. Lift door opens, ninth floor with no view as this side looks out over the other blocks and the Triangle. Where are we going? You'll see, just come on, and keep ya fucking voice down. Connor walks down the hallway and has to hold himself up against the wall and Jack does the same and his head starts to swim in amber dreams and the walls float and the doors laugh at him, soon he knows he will be sick, can feel it swelling down in his gut. Connor takes a deep breath, stifles a burp and together they are looking at a door that has seen its fair share of beatings. If the old man answers, run like fuck, Jack, I mean it, run like fucking fuck. Okay, but Jack isn't sure he can run and has to force his eyes open wide enough to keep focus on what is happening. Connor knocks, harsh echo in hallway like church bells in the city which can be heard from the school. Shuffling from behind the door and Connor turns and prepares his body and Jack goes to do the same but just can't seem to get it right and he stumbles into Connor and the two of them go crashing to the floor. Door opens, wild boys through knotted bodies peer wide eyed and fearful but it isn't the old man that is stood in the doorway peering down at them, it is the retard girl and she is just looking at them, looking at them and looking at them and she doesn't understand what is going on or why they are here, What do you want, and her voice is slow and dull and pointless like the drab clothes she wears. Ya dad in? Nope. Cool, can we come in? Jack here wants to play. Okay. And the girl waddles through the door and Jack sniggers because he has never been this close to her and he struggles to his feet and helps Connor up and the two of them walk through the door following the girl who staggers and drags her feet. The flat is cold and stinks of old man farts piss beer fags grease. In the main room Connor slumps into the single chair and a putrid stench drifts up from it, smelling of old socks and semen stained tissues. Girl is stood by window, her greasy black hair glistening like an oil spill. What do you want? And she looks at Connor and Connor winks and so she looks to Jack and then to the floor and then takes off her jogging bottoms revealing dirty white pants that seem to slide from her and flop to the floor like wet newspaper. Girl takes off her vest top and she wears no bra but should do and her body is shimmering from sweat and dirt and she is large and her body is covered in pimples and spots and scars and stretch marks and rolls of skin undulate when she breaths. Girl walks over to where Connor sits and goes to kneel but he sits up, Not me...him, and he points to Jack who is swaying and looking so young and his eyes reflect the shock his mind is reeling in but nothing is seeming to get through to Jacks body thanks to the amber distraction flooding his system. I don't think... Shut the fuck up, Jack, and do it! And the girl is on her knees in front of Jack and he watches her undo his trousers and they fall down and he can see his penis half erect behind navy blue boxers and the girl pulls them down and taking a breath holds his cock in her hand and puts it into her mouth and licks it until it is hard and Jack moans and she sucks and licks and sucks and wanks and licks at the tip and she knows what to do because this isnt her first time; pleasure not felt but still familiar and it is good and the image of the fat retard with rotten skin and stretch marks and dirty nails and hair is gone and sweet sensation release of spunk is coming from deep within him with a great rushing from his gut, his spine, his brain and his shaft that is wet with spit and the tip of his cock tingles and sparkles and wants to stretch out blow apart because it's coming, its coming, its coming, it all wants out in a gush that would spray for meters...... Jack tells her to stop and she takes it out of her mouth and he can't stand to look at her she is so grotesque so he keeps his eyes half shut and pictures the slags in the magazines and in the movies......he needs to fuck her so Jack points her to the window. She goes there and bends over and he joins her, tries to put his cock into her stinking hairy hole but he is young and out of practice and so the girl has to put it in for him. He thrusts his cock in not really knowing what is happening but wild boy is become wild man so instinct overpowers him and he tries to hold her but is repulsed at the feeling of her snake skin......deep and hard and deep and hard and deep and hard, then he moans and she stares blankly out the window as he shoots his hot spunk up inside her and when his amber ejaculation is done he pulls out of her and wipes his dick clean on her dirty jogging bottoms. Connor claps his hands and Jack sees that Connor has been sat on the sofa with his trousers down and he has been wanking himself off and so when he stands his penis points straight up, Don't you move Tori, now it's my turn. He walks over to her, pushes Jack to one side like a curtain and spits on his palm and wipes it onto his cock and winks at Jack as he parts her arse cheeks and forces his cock up into the girls backside and she groans with pain, not pleasure, and she keeps groaning as Connor pumps harder and harder and he smacks her arse, and then punches it harder and harder and she isn't screaming just moaning moaning moaning and he is screaming and yelling and laughing, Yeah, ya dirty fucking retard slut, ya fucking love it up ya arse ya dirty slut, yeah it's fucking good and tight. I'm ya fucking Daddy, I bet ya Daddy fucks ya like this don't he, bet he aint got a big dick like I have, stupid old cunt with a stupid retard daughter that loves a cock up her arse, yeah you know you love it you fucking dirty little slut. Then Connor roars and raises his hands in the air and steps back and takes out his cock and sprays her with his bright white juice and Jack just stares and his flaccid penis dangles and drips after juice onto the carpet......

......The room is silent apart from heavy breathing and this isn't what Jack had wanted but it is all done now and he feels powerful, in control, a man not a boy, a wild man like in the magazines of the fifties and he wants more and so he strokes his cock the way he knows best and when he is hard and Connor has stepped away from Tori, Lay on the floor Tori and open your fucking legs, he puts himself on top of her and shoves his cock up inside her again and doesn't care that she is wet with his juice and stinking and fat and ugly and a retard and that if anyone found out he would be laughed at and made to look a fool. He doesn't give a shit about any of that bollocks and so he just keeps hammering himself up into her swollen cunt with a fresh savagery; lost in the jungles of man's migration from the wilds to the concrete maze. Connor joins him on the floor and puts his hardening cock into her mouth and she sucks it, gags on it as it is covered in rectum juice and he pins her hands to stop her from pulling it away and together the boys fuck her in holes that don't push back what they are being given. Moaning groans sweet soft supple orgasmic space sounds of pleasure ejaculate hot spunk over her and when done both wild men watch her walk away into the bathroom and then they dress in silence. They leave the flat laughing and patting each other on the back and float down the hallway into the lift.......

......And when Jack finally gets home, three hours after he should have been, his mother questions him and tells him that Mark has been found dead in the alleyway and what the hell has he been up too and why hasn't he been in school and what are those marks on his trousers and that this isn't the boy she raised and she is angry and crying and losing the fucking plot and Jack tells her to go fuck herself, he is a Wild Man now, he doesn't need her, and he pushes her to the floor like a sack of coal and kicks her in the stomach so hard that his foot cracks along with the bones that protect his mother's fragile heart.

Kirsty's dreams vaporise into nothing but fetid spittle and her world dies screaming as she watches her son leave the flat with a bag slung over his shoulder and he is looking every part like his bastard fucking father did thirteen years ago. She failed then and she has failed now.

#

# not today

William sits in his chair and gazes out of the large bay window in his ninth floor flat. His eyes are reflections of all that he cannot see. Any other flat in any other part of the world would have a view if it was on the ninth floor, but not Williams. His view is of the two other tower blocks and nothing else. He can see the sky but what is the point of that when there is nothing but grey cloud? Twenty-two years he has lived here. Twenty-two long drawn out bastard years and for only two of those years has he been in work because of his illness, which means that he has spent twenty years in this fucking place, in this same fucking chair, looking through this same cunting piece of glass and falling on this same miserable piece of floor and pissing and shitting in that same grotty toilet and taking that same stinking lift with its failing buttons and flaking vinyl floor and seeing the same wretched people growing old as he is growing old and putting up with their bullshit whilst they have no time for his. Selfish pricks, all of them loving themselves more than him.

He looks at his walls and hates them for not only are they empty but he has nothing to show for anything, nothing to tell of his life, just bare walls and nicotine stained wallpaper and putrid brown ceilings with green purple damp patches where mould grows in dark corners. Everything he sees has a layer of dust upon it, even the remote control, even the spoon in his coffee cup.

Footsteps coming from the flat above pound his ears and he licks his lips and spits into his empty coffee cup which is bleached murky with age. Soft thuds of music come from up there like bullets fired in a cave and William runs his hands through is hair hard enough to draw blood, he curses the pricks that live above him, would one day go up there and give them what for, but not today.

Not today.

Not today.

No...not today

He pulls himself up from the chair and doesn't notice the smell as it has been a part of him for many years. Still in his dressing gown he busies himself picking up the empty beer cans that decorate the floor from his previous night's drinking, an activity that now makes up most of his life. The black bin bag fills quicker than he would have liked and he throws the bag into the kitchen and it lands next to two others which have been there for Christ knows how long. Linda wouldn't have put up with this and William looks at his pathetic reflection in the window, But Linda's dead, he tells himself, and a new rush of laziness threatens to drag him down and drown him and he questions himself on what he was doing today and what the point of it all was and he can see that there is a six pack of beer waiting for him on the kitchen side and the cans sparkle glory in the glow of the overhead light.

Not today.

Not today.

No, not today, he tells himself, and he goes about getting ready for the job interview he has in the city that he can't get excited about because those days have long gone. William, who has never been called Bill, showers, shaves, and dresses, and looks in the smeared mirror and is not enthused with the skeletal man that stares back at him. He ponders for a while where the younger him has gone. But deep down he knows. The medicine cupboard is opened and quickly shut as he can't face taking those pills so instead he splashes cold water over his face and tells himself to have a good day, don't dwell on it, let it go, be strong, be positive, and blah blah fucking blah.

He doesn't say goodbye to his daughter as he leaves. She is asleep in her bed and dribble coats her chin, her mouth is wide open, the room stinks of stale human.

The way down is busy, the lift rammed, but no one speaks to anyone and everyone keeps to themselves and it smells but the smell isn't one person it is all of them and William can feel himself getting angry and frustrated and sweaty and pressured and everyone is looking at him though their eyes don't see him and he hates all these motherscunts with their stupid faces and their dumb fucking mouths and he daren't look up for fear of his actions so William remains focused on the vinyl floor and then the lift doors open and light spills in and cool air engulfs him as he walks out into the fresh morning air.....air....

Should have taken those pills.

William has to run for the bus, makes it in time, but seats are at a premium. Everyone is glum, faces like downtrodden horses. There is an empty seat toward the back. He sits next to the window watching the world go by, the bus stops, and then someone sits next to him.

Not seen you on here before.

What?

Not seen you on here before.

Oh.

Going into town? William faces the man sat next to him, the man who is taking up too much of the seat because his legs are wide open as if he has the world's largest cock down there and his arms are crossed, elbows poking out all over the place, and this guy has no hair and is fat and sweating even though it isn't that hot.

Yep, and William turns away smiling that smile that he hopes would inform the other man to shut up and leave him alone.

Anything good?

William scratches at his forehead and he can feel his whole body start to shake and the nerves that the medicine should be taking away crawl over his skin and down his throat and into his eyes and up his nose and seeps into his ears and hacks and slashes their way through his brain and down his spine and into his groin where it tightens his balls until he is sure that they would come bursting out. The bus is getting smaller, baking hot oven with him as the bread, rising hate, the engine is loud, so fucking loud that William can hear nothing else apart from its fucking hateful roar and its roar and its roar and the brakes squeaking and the roar and the squeaking brakes and the man's elbows and his questions and the job interview and the roar of the engine and the man and his stupid massive legs and jabbing elbows and his retard fucking daughter and his bullshit flat and the roar of the engine and the squeaking brakes and the man with his elbows and the job interview and all the people and its hot, it's really hot and he needs to get out, out, out and all the people and he has no money and he needs beer and he has no life and his wife is dead and that flat and all the people around him and all those people don't get out of his way and all those people and their germs and their decay and all those people

all the people

all the people

all the people

all the people

and the heat they bring with them and the looks and the stares and the roar of the engine and he can't take it and he hates every last fucking one of these pricks and wants to smash their stupid dumbfucking faces in with a shovel and he... and he...and he must get off and William screams and yells and roars and barks and moans and the bus stops and people move away and the door opens and William jumps off and the cool breeze hits him like a wave, pulls him along, drags his mind into spaces of light and dark and coloured rings flash around him and they speak to him but their spoken words are foreign and he can't see the subtitles and then another wave of cool air and the bus is gone and the world is quiet......

soft breeze

the bus is gone

the world gone quiet

the man is gone

there are no people

no more glares

the world gone quiet

the job interview won't happen

he won't have to speak to anyone

he won't have to speak to anyone

he can go home

he can go home

he can have a drink

a drink

he can take his pills

he can sit

he can breathe

and breathe......breathe......breathe...... breath and what is fading starts to shine and the wind brushes over him and he likes the wind because he doesn't know where it has been and it doesn't know him or where he has been, only that he is here and the wind is here with him and that's okay, like it's okay to eat fish or cow or pig. The wind is all around him, cooling him down.

The floor is dusty and William sits there on the hard shoulder of the carriageway with his head in his hands and his legs hitched up, not wanting to breathe but unable to stop himself from doing it, the spots behind his eyes dance from colour to colour; oranges and greens then red with violet stripes and there are voices still, sweet voices telling him things he can't understand but somehow he knows they wish him well on whatever journey he is about to take.

Cars and vans and trucks rush by. Howling winds break across his fragile body and he is moved by them but doesn't topple. He won't topple. Not today. No, not today. Staggering home, slipping on the angled verge dodging rubbish and torn tyres, then off the main road into fields of grass and rubble that were once planned for great things but now just wasteland dreamscapes of past wishes. Dust whips about him, he drifts on, towards home, to his chair, and to his nothing view and his empty bed and the medicine cabinet where the pills sit in little plastic bottles marked two-a-day and they are needed to take the brain pain away.

Tower blocks on the horizon stood upright like putrefied worms pulled from the earth's crust. He knows they are there and sees that they are there and holding out his hands he squashes them in his palms and squeezes them so tight his fists turn white and pain shoots through him. Hands released and there they still are. If he had the strength to blow them over he would and as they fell he would run to them and let the concrete walls fall onto his body.

Sun moves along.

William passes the corner shop, tempted by the back shelf of shiny cans and shiny waking dreams that they offer but walks on by. There is a boy in the alleyway, covered in sick and smelling of shit and William stands there looking at him with hands in pockets and shallow eyes. There are bruises on the boy's face and cuts on his legs and his skin is pale and it looks like he isn't breathing so William doesn't hang around and keeps on going and now he thinks that he knows the boy, and that that boy that will soon be a man, and in a flash of mind pictures sees that boys life turning out like his own; a rotted existence full of hopelessness and decay; ripe decay.

Sun moves along.

Lift is empty, inside the noise is too loud for ears that want silence and he walks down the hallway to his flat, and takes out his keys, and he opens the door. The smell of him is out the door and attacking him and he shrinks his face to it. There is a gloom in his flat, a gloom he hasn't seen before, though nothing has changed and he supposes that the gloom has always been there and it's the lack of the healing medicine that is making him see it.

The bathroom light is on, the only light that is on because it has to be as there are no windows in there. His daughters room is dark, curtains drawn as they always are and her clothes are piled on the floor and he makes a move to go in there and tidy them up because he has told her to clean her shit up so many times, but William doesn't go in there, just stands in the doorway thinking of going in there and getting angry at those thoughts of thinking about going in there and then getting frustrated at his daughter because she is a fucking nuisance to him, a burden he wanted not a shard of light to shine upon. His only gift to the world ends up being that ragged pile of skin and bone.

He needs his medicine.

Goes into bathroom.

Shower curtain covers the bath but the shower isn't on and in the silence William can hear dripping water. The mirror on the medicine cabinet is fogged up so that his reflection is just a murky nothing. Eyes to shower curtain, shadow of someone laying in bath.

You fell asleep in there.........? Oi, Tori! You alive.........?

Nothing but dripping taps and distant police screams and sirens.

If you don't say something I'm opening up...... Right you fucking idiot, better cover up, and the curtain is drawn and there she is, floating in red water, blood smeared along moulding tiles and running down the walls like a mischievous waterfall. Deep black red gore still pours from open wounds on the fragile skin of Tori's wrists. Her eyes are open, she is looking at him. His silhouette in the doorway holding the shower curtain like a vale to the sleepy nightmare dreamworld of youth watches him from those dead shark eyes and they know him and see him for what he really is.

William hates the truth that is laid out before him, a vast desert of absolutely nothing.

Curtain is let go of. Vale covers nightmare gaze that William isn't scared of but is ashamed of.

Medicine is taken. Twice as much as recommended but that won't hurt, William knows what he is doing. He waits in the bathroom looking at the vinyl floor and counting the black tiles and then counting the white tiles and there are more white than black. He hasn't thought of her in the bath as to do so means to do something about it and he doesn't know what to do. Takes two more pills, then two more in a dry throat that wants to scream but doesn't know how. An epiphany comes to William, it sings to him like a virgin blossoming into sweet orgasm, but then it is swept away and is gone to nothing and that sums up his life, a single moment summing up decades of existence.

World goes grey, spots of colour and streamers of light pierce brain through his sleepy sockets. Laughs, laughs again, prick, as he thinks of the man on the bus and his open legs and stupid pointing elbows and sweaty head.

Shirt and trousers are wet. Strangling his skin. Blood smell, water smell, iron and decay smell and rotten flowers and body smell and sex smell which lingers in there like a vile aftertaste. Out of bathroom, head on backwards, colours spinning in eyes and floating legs and buoyant arms drift into living room and there is a note stuck to the window. Legs drift him over to the window and a tiredness claws at him and will win eventually and he will fall but that's okay, that's okay, because the floor can be slept on, and this world can be left to the cunts that still want to live here.

Note on beige paper read with wide eyes that could swallow moons.

Bye, Dad. Funs gone. Time I wents to sleep.

Connor bad.

Jacks bad too.

They hurt me and I don't want to go on anymore.

Note is crumpled up, thrown to the floor, where later beer cans can befriend it.

William sits in his chair, staring out of the window, gazing at the stars which he can't see because those fucking towers are in the way.

#

# just there for show

Hair is done - gelled perfection. Shave one day stubble then aftershave splashed on - smelling good. Suit is on, tie and pin and matching hanky in top pocket - dapper. Shoes on. Shined up. Reflection in mirror in bedroom is inspected, no issues. Closer inspection in bathroom mirror, spot squeezed, ointment applied and light foundation powder used to cover up the red blemish. Smile at reflection and wink and the other him in the mirror winks back. One final look in the bedroom mirror at full portrait and there is something...something...something... tie, it doesn't fully match, too bright for this suit so a lighter one is swished from the bespoke hanger in his bespoke wardrobe and regimentally tied into a Windsor knot and adjusted to an appropriate length.

Reflection in full length mirror now, looking good. Bathroom mirror, looking good. Final splash of aftershave, one final check of perfection. Good to go.

Into bright white kitchen. Napkin on. Drinks health yoghurt and takes a pill. Napkin off and washes hands. Grabs banana, fresh leaf salad, and pre-cooked chicken from fridge and puts everything neatly into brown leather satchel.

Back into bathroom. Applies lotion to hands. Looks into mirror, makes good to wayward hair with comb and still looking good, and needs to look good. Out the door, grabbing car keys, house keys, light coat made for hot days that might turn cold and is never worn, just there for show like most of the things that he has. They are all there just for show.

Third floor only, takes stairs to upper car park two floors down and gets in car looking in the rear view mirror at himself just in case. Drives out into daylight and the fierce sunshine engulfs the car. Shades on. Ray Bans but not the Aviators. White car, new model Audi, spotless, scratchless, a miracle but not from God but from him and his hard work. Out of the Triangle, world flashes by, onto A-road, then into city through heavy rush hour traffic and lights flick from green to red and people cross and look at him in his car and the men he sees are jealous and the women he knows want him and what he can give them. He loves the city, the hustle and bustle, the activity, the surge of people and cars and heat and the women, oh God city women are such easy pickups.

Car is parked next to another Audi and a BMW and a Mercedes and they are all new and shiny and scratchless. Looks like a car showroom more than a workplace. Sun beats down on windscreens which scream bright globes of white light; angel's tears on tarmac.

Ray Bans removed, the other cars are scanned, quickly, just in case they are better than his. But they aren't, and if they were that would have ruined what was going to be a good day like that day when his business card was delivered and the whiteness wasn't right and the font looked two blurry and it was all just shit, shit, SHIT.

Satchel in hand, glasses away, his expensive watch shining on a smooth wrist. Heads into office building and knows the ladies are looking at him because they always look at him and he wishes he would have gone to the gym today as his suit doesn't feel as tight as it should.

In lift. Inspects himself in the mirror and likes what he sees and doesn't care that there is a camera and the security man sat in his small office with a stinking coffee and half a soggy doughnut can see him because fuck him and fuck his life and look at my life and what you don't have you blue tie wearing skank low life prick.

Top floor.

Door opens, glass walls with beams and spheres of light pouring in. Open plan, a handful of desks, sofas, and tables and a pool table and a bar in the corner with soft lighting and shiny glasses with expensive drinks for expensive tastes. Areas for dressing and for photo shoots and a room with tinted windows for those of a more discrete nature. It smells good, always it smells good up here, and there is music playing and the sound of typing and talking drifts like a sweet ocean breeze across the fragrant air. Heads over to his own desk and places satchel on the desk and takes out laptop and phone and makes sure that his keys are on view and his glasses and the flashy pen and his flashy notebook can be seen by anyone that cares to walk by and look. Lunch is put into fridge hidden in a desk behind him. View from the window is of city skyline. Trees in the nearby park wave, the sun reflects off of the solar panels dangling from rooftops and life up here is good, but there is a pressure that comes with the good life and that pressure is always here, like gravity is always there tugging at you, pulling you down, it keeps you grounded.

Checks diary. Calendar looking busy. Three ladies; the first for brunch and shopping-that's Elaine, the second for lunch and to display to friends - that's Steph, and the third for evening celebration, meal and then extras - that's Caroline, she's new. Smiles at his life and opens laptop. Looks at phone whilst it boots up. Two more men dressed in their finery walk in, acknowledgment is short and sweet and behind nods and smiles and hellos there is resentment and hatred because they are all lions, they are all alpha males, and not one of them is a cub, or a boy, or a vice-captain or anything that denotes them as a loser in life. To think like that is to fail. Second is first of the losers.

Checks time. Plenty left before the first job.

Struts over to the desk in the middle of the office. Pretty woman sitting there looking at a computer screen and she is all red hair and green eyes and legs that go all the way up and tits and arse that you would easily see on the cover of Vogue or some junky man's wank mag. She wears a tight blue dress that hugs and caresses her like the men of the outside would like to but will never be able to because they are no way near her level and never will be even with money.

Ready for today?

Yep, anything I should know about that new woman, Caroline?

No, only that she asked for you by name. You are getting popular.

He smiles, Can you blame her?

She doesn't smile and just looks at him and then back to her computer, Best be on your way, stud.

Back at desk, sits in leather bound office chair not bought from a warehouse and checks his laptop. Forwards details of today's jobs to his email account and makes sure they are on his phone before closing down and putting his laptop gently into the swish desk drawer. He doesn't lock it.

Walking out of the office, shoes shining bright, hair and face a glow of masculinity and he is all that he can be and everything any man would want to be. Vein is the word he hears about himself and he can't blame them for thinking that. But he isn't vein as he checks himself in the mirror that is on the back wall of the lift, he is proud. Proud of himself. Treats himself with respect and has gained the respect of others by being strong, straight, and fair and good looking. He sees how the others are treated for working, spat at and robbed and hated. So he did things so to not be treated that way.

Lift opens, walks through lobby and the ladies all stare and he takes out his key fob and makes sure everyone sees him blip the button and he puts on his sunglasses and glances at his watch for no reason other than it will make people see it and they will think, oh boy, that guy is so good looking blah, blah, blah...

Drives away.

First job of the day. Elaine is forty. Twice his age but that makes no difference and she doesn't want to be fucked and that's good because she is a shit lay and he usually has to force the ejaculation from his body. Brunch and shopping and nice things said to a woman that needs to have nice things said to her. Pride is a vicious cunt. Time's up, kisses on cheek, and possible next dates arranged and then cash is handed over in white envelope that smells of perfume and is sealed with a bright red lipstick kiss. Outside, money is put into sweet smelling leather wallet and the envelope is thrown away. Discarded like so many others.

Second job of the day. Steph is thirty-five. Divorced, getting thick around the waist. She needs to show off. He meets her friends, who aren't real friends really, just those fake clinger-ons that pretend to be your friends only so that they can compare how great their life is compared to your shitty one and some see the veil she is trying to pull over their eyes but it matters not to her. Pride is a vicious cunt. Lunch eaten. Time's up. Kisses on cheek but Steph wants more but calendar is full and arrangements are made for tomorrow night but she has to check with the office first. Her place he agrees to, no problem, but she will have to check with the office to make sure there isnt any double booking. Extra paid for extras because Steph likes it a bit rough even though he is sure that tomorrow is booked but she is so persistent he feels it best to agree and take the money. Envelope is handed over smelling of perfume, no kiss on this one but there is a note detailing what she is going to do to him blah blah blah. Outside, the money is put into sweet smelling leather wallet and the envelope and note are both thrown away. Discarded like so many others.

Third and final job of the day. Caroline is in her fifties but has a body that any twenty year old would die for. It's real too. Short hair, skin clean, smooth, perfect, but her eyes give away her age and that isn't a bad thing, he kind of likes that and he likes her and the day is ending well. Caroline is as powerful as he, commands the room, has an inbuilt respect for herself, and knows who she is and what she wants and knows that she is a sexy woman and uses that sex to make sure she gets what she wants. Men are praised for such a thing, a woman is just a bitch. All the others know what he is but they don't care because they have probably done it from time to time and will do it in the future when their skin starts to sag and the men don't look at them anymore. The night draws on. He starts to get a little tired so excuses himself and in the five star bathroom which is pristine white and glowing with gold taps and plugs he snorts some of his own pristine white and the night just got a little earlier, a little more golden.

Meal eaten. Five star dining with sauces and smears and airs and foams and fish dishes and sorbet cleansers.

Dancing and drinking and she can see what he has done, it's in his eyes, and Caroline – oh how he loves that name - asks him for some too and together in the bathroom the pristine white powder is cut up and snorted and noses are wiped clean on hot towels that have gold filigree framing around their heavy cotton. Hand in hand, arm in arm, they strut and drink and dance and laugh and feel good and comfortable and most of all they feel free and sexy and at one with each other. A couple which makes the other guests grimace with jealously but like they could give a fuck about that.

Dance over. In car. Small talk but no flirting as there is no need as this is a done deal for both of them. In apartment at heart of the city. Top floor, this is the penthouse. Sleek, crisp rooms with glass and marble and soft lights and modern paintings and it's the type of place he wants and could see himself in.

Drink?

Yes, please.

Whiskey isn't sour, but sweet, and burns just a little and tastes of money. She drinks hers and she looks at him with eyes that he has seen many times. He likes looking into those eyes. You have beautiful eyes, Caroline.

She smiles and seems not to dwell on the compliment and he never says stuff like that before the extras are done because they don't want to hear that most of the time.

He downs the whiskey and she takes the tumbler and places it on a shelf that isn't designed to hold such things. The clutter looks odd, out of place, but he is sure that in the morning a cleaner will quickly sweep it away and shine that glass to a diamond shine. The lights are dim, dark blue like the night, and she and him are part of the night and the stars light up their eyes, make their skin glisten and each know what is about to happen and have no questions or anxieties because it is a done deal, and even though it has been paid for that doesn't diminish the fact that this is a natural act for them both.

He goes to the bathroom and wipes some white underneath his foreskin and watches as it dissolves. He wants to last, he wants to devour her. Flushing the toilet he heads into the living area and she is stood by the window that looks out over the city and she is naked apart from a single rose that is held between her teeth. Walking to her he takes off his suit jacket and drapes it across the large sofa. She hurls the rose to the floor.

Caroline undresses him. Touching him softly, etching the shape of his muscles with the tips of her fingers. Her eyes are fixed on him as she leans forward and she kisses him fully on the mouth and their skin electrifies together and he can feel her heat pulsing in giant solar waves as her need for him intensifies. He gently lowers her to the floor and she moans softly as he licks her and kisses her all the way down to her neatly shaven pleasure.

The stars watch with twinkling eyes.

Envelope is handed over, extras paid with a little extra on top, and there is an awkward silence between them and then the door is opened and he is off and driving home to the towers of the Triangle.

He hasn't thrown that envelope away. To do so wouldn't be right. There is something about that envelope, there is no perfume smell to it, no lipstick kiss, no panties left inside of it, he just doesn't want to forget her.

Parks his car and thinks of her soft skin and the dimple on her spine just above the sweet sphere of her buttocks. Perfect skin.

Up the stairs covered in bubble-gum and litter. The smell of bleach and vomit is strong tonight, stinks like it has been festering there all day. He fucking hates this place, ashamed to live here amongst the ripe decay.

Outside of his flat there is a man, standing with his head down, holding a knife that could gut a horse with one quick slice.

You don't need to bring that. I have your money.

Man looks up, doesn't say anything because the wry grin on his pot marked face says it all. Brown envelope is taken out of his leather satchel and handed to the man who holds the knife and that man counts it, taking his time, making sure it is all there and when satisfied, See ya next month, and brushes past and leaves the hallway and is gone into the night and a subtle stink of sweat and deodorant hovers like a botfly.

Sighing but not from fear, just from exhaustion, he unlocks his front door and places his satchel on the kitchen table and the coat back on the coat rack by the door. He undresses slowly, taking care to hang the suit correctly even though it is going to be washed tomorrow at the cleaners. He showers, takes his time, makes sure he is clean and dry before applying the various powders and ointments and lotions to his body and all the while he thinks of his life outside of these concrete walls and these stinking bins and the shaky lifts and the bleached staircases.

He washes his mind of such things, rids his thoughts of anything that is to do with this place. Instead, he thinks of her, and him, and then him with her. With Caroline. Her body, her hair, her scent, the way she walks and talks and dances and holds him and looks at him, Christ, how she looks at him. He has never felt about one of his customers in this way before. There is a well in his stomach, filled with something, maybe an emotion not quite love but nearly love, whatever that is called, and his little bucket of a brain is dipping down into that well and bringing up that emotion and it feels good, but not safe. Dangerous liquid in his brain bucket.

Pride is a vicious cunt and pride has to be appeased no matter what the cost. Respect can be bought. Safety can be bought, pretty much anything can be bought, some things cost more than others, but in the end everything has a price tag. We all like to think of ourselves as more than an item in some faceless supermarket, but we are not. We are a bag of crisps, a sack of spuds, a can of soup, and we sit on the shelf, festering, going green with mould whilst we wait to be picked up. Chosen.

He looks at his own reflection, likes what he sees, but frowns at the thoughts that linger in his head. Thoughts that won't go away, won't ever go away until he is out of here, out of the Triangle and into the city where he is sure he belongs. He can't stop thinking about Caroline and it's the first time he has ever been like this.

Time is moving on and he feels tired. Goes to bed. Dreams of Caroline, of her apartment, then her on the sofa as naked as a windswept desert and she is looking at him and saying something he can't hear but he has seen that look before so the words mean nothing and he takes out his hard cock and fucks her hard and fast and she seems to struggle under his weight and when he is done and his load is shot up inside of her she is limp and doesn't caress him or kiss him like he wants her too and he nudges her neck with his nose but there is nothing, not even heat, not even a breath.

When he wakes he is hot, breathing hard, and he is clutching his duvet and everything feels wet, glue like tacky, and there is a stink in the room, the stink of man. He feels sad, as if something dear to him has been lost and gone forever and as much as he thinks of what is gone he can't seem to catch what that lost thing is. But it is gone, of that he is sure. But nothing to him is that precious, perhaps his car and his suits but they are all still there.

Morning routine is carried out. Lunch is packed, coat is grabbed along with keys and satchel and into car and drives away into city through traffic and lights and people crossing and looking at him though none of it matters right now as he is still trying to think what has gone and what he needs to do to get it back.

There is a new car in the car park. A car that he has never seen before and it is silver and shining bright and the number plate is CAROL49 which sends shivers down his spine and his flesh itches with anticipation even though that car could belong to anyone, but that's such foolish thinking. Into office, presses the button to bring down the lift and all eyes are on him but all he can think of is her, of Caroline, and he can't let her slip away from him.

Lift opens to the usual scene. As he strolls to his desk and puts away his things he looks around but only the red haired receptionist is there. The door to the room with tinted glass is closed, the blinds down. Perhaps she is in there and he stares at that small room until his ears are ringing with silence and his jaw is clenched tight enough to send arrows of pain into his gums. The thought of her being in there excites and scares him and he wants to know why she is here, what did he do wrong.

And then he is aware of a shadow. It may have been there for a few minutes or just draped itself over him but now that he sees the shadow he can't ignore it.

It's the receptionist, You alright?

Yeah, I'm good. Who's in there?

Caroline. She's in with Mr Henderson. She emailed him last night and demanded he meet with her this morning.

Really?

Receptionist nods.

You got your diary for today?

Err, yeah, just the one this afternoon I think. Did Steph call to make an appointment for today, we discussed something yesterday, and she said she would contact you?

No, nothing yet. But if she does I will book it for after three, and with that the receptionist glides away but he doesn't watch her go even though she is wearing the tight red dress that he likes. He is too interested in that door, in that little office with its tinted windows and its closed blinds and the woman that is on the other side and what she is talking about to his boss. He hopes that it aint bad, that he did something to upset her or that she wants someone else as he aint good enough. Christ that would be shit, if he wasn't good enough, like he was being cheated on or something and suddenly it is like being a fourteen year old boy with a crush on the prettiest girl in school but she turns you down for another and all at once you feel like nothing, a no one, pathetic, a small stupid kid. A fucking waste of space.

He can hear his watch ticking. The beating of his heart is like a muted drum in his ears. With a dry throat he walks to the drinks machine and pours himself a water. It's cold and fresh so he pours another and watches the office in case any one comes out. But nobody does. He goes back to his desk and busies himself with his laptop and looks at the news on some bullshit website and tries to rid his mind of the constant thought of her and her with him and then that niggling feeling that something is missing, lost, gone for good, drips into his thoughts and the words he reads on the website mean nothing and the pictures are blank and pointless.

The door to the office opens with a silent swoosh and his head turns quickly, followed by his body on the swivel chair. He tries not to look like he has been waiting with baited breath for the door to open but it's pretty futile and she looks over to him and smiles. Saying thank you and shaking the boss man's large hand she leaves. She is wearing a simple dress, turquoise down to the knees and he smiles at her and she at him and it looks as if she goes to wave or do something but instead keeps her hands clutched to her small sleek handbag, and leaves the office by the elevator but when she walks in she doesn't turn around so all that shows is the dipped back of her dress and the curves of her body which less than twelve hours ago had been his and his alone. He watches her all the way, the missing thing that had been niggling him all morning fading, like a star in dawns early light. The lift door closes and her body is blocked by the doors.

Can I see you, Daniel?

Yeah sure, Mr Henderson.

He walks into the office, past Mr Henderson who is like him but a little bit better and everyone knows that, even Mr Henderson, and that's okay. The room still smells of her. A deep womanly scent that demolishes your senses and leaves nothing there but the image of her and her body and her sexuality and her power. The door is closed and he sits down on the still warm seat. Mr Henderson sits on the other side, offers Dan a drink which he declines and the boss man wraps his grey suit jacket around the chair and sits down. He flattens down his tie and takes a mouthful of water.

Is there a problem, Mr Henderson?

Oh no, nothing like that. What makes you think that there is a problem?

Caroline, I was with her last night. I guess I've never had a client call you and demand a meeting.

That was a shock to me, flattens his tie down even though it doesn't need doing and he looks at his phone before continuing, But Caroline is one of our _elite_ clients, so we must go that extra mile. His phone buzzes and he glances at the screen but nothing more.

Daniel wishes he had said yes to that drink of water.

How long have you been here, Daniel? Five, six months?

Two years in September, Mr Henderson.

Really, two years already? Time does fly around here. Seems like only yesterday I was sat where you are now, talking to my boss about my future.

My future?

Yes, Daniel, your future, both here and with your personal life too I suppose. But to cut to the chase, as I can see you are a bit mystified, Caroline spoke very highly of you just then, and she has, quite simply, requested that she takes full control of your diary.

I'm sorry, what? I don't understand.

She has requested that your diary be emptied and that she is now your only client, that no other woman can request your services from this day forth until she terminates the contract. It's not a common practice, to be honest I can't remember the last time it happened, but it _has_ happened from time to time.

Can I have that glass of water now?

Certainly, and Mr Henderson pours him a glass of water and then sits back down taking glances at his phone. Behind him, through the window, the world is stretched out, all the way to the hills to the west across to the sea to the east. It was the same view he would see from Caroline's window.

Wow, I don't know what to say. I wasn't expecting that.

I can imagine. Caroline expects an answer by the end of the week. So that gives you three days to think it over. In the meantime she has asked that you do not see other women or engage in any other _activities_ with women, or men, for that matter, until you have spoken with her about your decision.

But what about... She has deposited a sum slightly larger than what you would have made in the three days into your account to cover any losses.

Okay. So what do I do now?

Go home and think about it, Daniel. You will receive an email from the office in an hour or so, once it has been typed up, which has some further details of the arrangement and a potential need for a contract of sorts. But if I were you, Daniel, I would seriously consider agreeing to the deal, this sort of thing doesn't happen too often. Do you understand that?

Daniel nods. He is hot and feels as if he is panting and sucking in great gulps of air. That lost thing is still lost, but he knows where it is and can see it, feel it, taste it and smell it like the air when the tide is out and the mud and the rotten guts of fish is all that you can stink.

He drives home, seeing himself in that apartment with her, him belonging to her until sometime in the future which is so far away it isnt even worth thinking about. Mr Henderson told him to think about it, mull it over, but what the hell is there to think about? And driving into the bullshit car park of his bullshit tower block and up in the filthy stairway into the stinking hallway just adds to the reasons of his choice to get the fuck out of here and to find the thing that he was sure was lost.

Love at first sight – what a load of sentimental shite, but there was a truth to it. He is living that truth right now. He aint in love with her, not yet anyway, he's just fascinated by her and has a longing to be with Caroline that is unlike anything he has ever felt before.

It's time to move on, time to let go of this life and to start a fresh one where he doesn't have to feel ashamed of where he lives or those he sees or pays money too. Finally, all that he has worked for, struggled through, paid heavy prices for, has paid off and he is going to be happy, content and maybe...

Just maybe...

He tries not to think about it but the word tickles his tongue and lights up his mind and he has to say it out loud to the world:

Love.

# ruined

You know he used to pay me every week, right? Without fail. Shit that guy was desperate to keep it quiet. He would do anything, go with any price, buy anything as long as it stopped the others from fucking with him. But I still hated that pretty boy fuck with all his fancy clothes and his flashy car and his expensive watch. Jesusfuckingkrist fuck him. Thinks he was getting a bit of peace and quiet just by passing me a few quid each week, bloke must have been some sort of fucking moron. I had had enough of him and his fucking face and the way he looked at me when I stood there waiting to take his money like I am there for the fucking fun of it. And tonight, when I go round to tell him the rates going up and he gets all fresh with me and starts pointing his stupid finger and raising his voice coz he don't want to pay no more money and that he can take care of himself like he's some super heavy weight boxer...... What a dick. Does he not know who the fuck I am? I can still see him now, stood in his doorway like a prince of some Arab country telling me what I should be doing and where I should be going. Telling me that he aint going to be paying me no more and that soon he is going to be out of here and in the city where he don't have to deal with people like me anymore. People like me. What the fuck? What the fuck that supposed to mean? I asked him and he took a little step back and I could see he was regretting it but he had gone too far now and so he had to stand up to me, fronting me up. He says that he hates me and everyone else around here, hates how he is laughed at and threatened just because he has a job and a good life and all that bullshit I have heard a thousand times before. I tell him to shut the fuck up or I was going to bash his skull in but he wouldn't stop and the next thing I know is that he is trying to shut the door in my face and aint no mother fucker doing that to me so I shove my way in and I go at the cunt. Really go at him. His face is all smashed up and his blood is all over that fucking stupid beige carpet and dripping from his wardrobe doors. He had a look on his face like a rabbit that's just about to be smashed to bits or that look when you catch someone wanking, he looked so fucking funny I had to laugh. He gurgled something at me, maybe please, or stop or somefuckingthing I don't know and he grabbed hold of my leg so I kicked out and connected with the back of his head and I heard something crack, like a branch snapping or a snails shell crunching under yer boot and then he was quiet. Thought I knocked him out or something. But it's better than that.

Fucking cunt went and died. So then I really lost it and kicked and kicked that stupid big bag of meat until my feet hurt and my legs felt as if they were going to give way.

Did anyone seeya?

Course not, I aint stupid.

What about his stuff?

Well it's a good job he had a load of black bin bags, if yaknow what I mean? Hahahahaha...

...Hahahahaha...

...Hahahahaha...

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Hahahahaha you wanna hit? Yeah, sure, why the fuck not, I need something to take away that fucking look on that pricks face. You got a cloth or something? My trainers are covered in his face.

# daylight through a smeared window

I'd like a dog but I'm not allowed one. I'd like a friend but they don't seem to want me. Maybe it's because I'm different.

I am different, I know that, I can see it every day when I look into the mirror and see that different girl looking back at me. She looks like me, winks when I do, and pokes her tongue out when I do too, but she is different to other people. I know I'm different because my thoughts aren't right, hahahahaha. I don't think the same as you, not that I really know what you think, I guess maybe you think about trees, and grass, and pretty people and jobs and maybe sometimes you think of your work or your kids and then maybe your job and money and then bills and rent and stuff like that. Those thoughts are shit. I don't think stuff like that. I know that those things you think about exist, but they are meaningless to me. They are as meaningless to me as I am to you, hahahahaha.

I said that friends don't want me. That is a little bit of a lie, hahahahaha. I do have one friend. He comes to see me most days, talks with me and tells me things and I can tell him what I think about and he doesn't mind or turn away or call me mental and walk away shaking his head and wishing I would just fuck off and die.

Sometimes I wish I could just fuck off and die.

Just DIE.

I watch daylight through a smeared window in my living room and I know I could jump out that window and I would fall.

Down.

I would not fly into the sky like the birds do or the super guys do on TV and when I hit the ground I _would_ die, would just fucking DIE, and my guts and brains and shit and piss would go everywhere and I would be just fucking DEAD hahahahaha. I know I won't fly if I were to jump out my window. I know that because my dog didn't fly and I am heavier than what my dog was and I don't have wings either and so like my little dog, who was called Brownie and he was brown and had floppy ears and a small stubby tail, I would fall and fall and fall until WHAM I hit the floor and SPLAT my guts and shit and piss and brains and bones and eyes would go all over the place like Brownies did, hahahahaha.

My mum had been unhappy with me, she yelled and screamed and was sick all over her dress and shoes, hahahahaha, and my dad walked out of the flat holding his head in his hands and I am sure he was sobbing. I laughed, hahahahaha. I laughed at my mum because she looked funny, I laughed as I watched Brownie twist and turn in the air as he fell and fell and fell. I laughed because I thought my dad was crying though I never found out as he didn't come back home after that day.

Maybe that's why I wasn't allowed a dog again, my dad was the one that worked, so with him gone we had no money and dogs cost money, I know that, I'm not stupid yaknow, my mum didn't work and she went after him, not right away, but after a few weeks she went and took some clothes with her in a little back pack. I think she wanted sex. I know what that is, hahahahaha. It's when, hahahahaha, the man puts his dick up a girls fanny, hahahahaha and then there is some moaning and swearing and some sweating and then something creamy comes out the man's dick and the woman has to clean it up with tissues and those tissues stink if they aint flushed down the toilet, hahahahaha. I've seen a movie where the men spray it all over the place and the girls lick it all up. It looks tasty and I hope one day I can taste it as all the girls in the movies seem to love it.

Mum didn't come back. I won't be getting a dog, and I know that because she left when I was twelve and now I'm twenty-three and the fat woman in white aint my mum or my dad or my aunty or my grandparent and so she won't buy me shit as I aint her problem and she shakes her head at me because I am not like her and I don't listen to her and she is weird as she is the one that is supposed to help me, supposed to understand me, but she don't understand SHIT. I want to kill her, the fat fucking prick. Stupid blonde hair with flowery clips and makeup and stinking perfume that smells of piss and creamy stained tissues that I found in the bathroom bin and fed to the dog before he went flying out the window. She has stupid little fucking eyes that blink all the fucking time. Do this - blink, and do that – blink, and this - blink – blink - blink – blink - blink – blink – BLINK arghhhhhh fuck they blink and blink all the fucking time. Man I'd love to gouge out those fucking eyes and shove them up her ass and cut her face and slice her cheeks open so that when she screams her mouth would tear apart, hahahahaha, and her dirty teeth would all fall out, hahahahaha and those that didn't I would bash out with a hammer, hahahahaha, so that hahahahaha, so that she choked on them, hahahahaha. I'd like to strap her to a chair, hahahahaha, and crack her thin stupid shins, hahahahaha, with a tennis racket, hahahahaha or cut off her fingers one by one and shove them up her fanny, hahahahaha. Maybe one day I could pour petrol in her hair and set it on fire and then pour oil down her throat and watch as the flames dribbled down into her throat and she explodes and all her guts go over the place, hahahahaha. Or maybe just to light her whole body on fire and I'd watched her burn to death as I fuck myself with my hand, hahahahaha and come and come and come until the carpet is soaked with my fanny juice and I'm rolling around in it laughing, hahahahaha and coming hahahahaha. That would be funny, hahahahaha.

I have to call her Miss Johnson, all the time, not Rebecca, which is what everyone else that comes in here calls here. Stupid named bitch. I can look after myself, I don't need no helper or nurse or keeper or whatever the fuck she is by my side every fuckingsecond of the day.

She don't let me go out either. I'm not to go outside, can only go out on the balcony, which isnt too bad, but I would like to run on the grass even if it is covered in dog shit and drunks. I could get a bit of that dog shit and put it in her stupid pink shoes and watch as she puts them on, hahahahaha, and her face shrinks when she feels it and then smells it.

I have to stand on that balcony and watch everybody else run about and do what they want to do and watch kids play and drunks drink stinking juice and those guys who mince about with packages mince about down there and all the time I think that I would like to go down there, touch the grass, or swing on a swing or maybe have a drink from a bottle covered in a brown bag. It looks like fun. It all looks like fun.

But I am not allowed, like I said earlier, old Mrs Fucking Blink and Blink won't let me. She says it's for my own good, like I am some sort of mass murderer or a fucking great big elephant or something. I just don't get it. Really, can someone explain to me what not going out there does for my own good? Coz I'm fucking confused and it don't take much for me to get a bit mixed up, hahahahaha. My friend can't explain it, he just waves it away and laughs and tries to tell me about space or time or the planets and to be honest, half the time I don't listen coz I don't get what he talks about but it is nice to hear his voice; to know I'm not alone, so I let him carry on and nod along until he is done, and we can talk about how we are going to kill that stupid cunt that looks after me and throw her fat pathetic body off the balcony and watch it spin through the air like a Frisbee until it KAPOW hits the concrete floor and her fucking fat body is covering everything with its blood, hahahahaha.

Oh great, here she comes now, clomping up the hallway like some giant land based whale with legs made of concrete.....

Oh, my friend is here too, I didn't see him come in...

...Smash her teeth out with a hammer, and watch her choke on the blood and the bits of broken tooth. What? With a knife? Shit, I don't know if I could cut something out of her but I could shove that blade in her guts and look at her straight in the eye as I turn it and turn it and turn it until the pointy end is sticking out of her back.

What do you mean you gotta go? Where you going? Don't leave me alone with her, not today you just got here.

Well don't be long, okay, I want to talk about stuff once she's gone.

Good morning, Molly. How are you today?

Mmmokay.

I see that you haven't got dressed yet. Have you even had breakfast?

Jesus, you're a fucking waste of time, No, I haven't had breakfast yet, and I want to stay in my nightie.

But it's passed eleven already. If you want I can make you something while you get changed?

I don't want to get changed and I'm not hungry. If I was hungry I would have made something for myself, I aint stupid.

I didn't say you were stupid, Molly. I don't want you to starve.

And there go her eyes, blink and blink and blink and blink and she just looks at me and then the walls of the flat and then out the window and she is looking for trouble, going to start trouble, I can feel it.

Why don't you go and get ready and if you like we can go out for a bit.

Like that would ever fucking happen you blinking fat cunt.

I don't want to get changed.

But it's a nice day. Come on, get changed and we can go out, you've been cramped up in here for weeks and weeks. We can get something nice for tea.

Yeah right, fuck you, it's a trick, it's all a trick. I'll go and get changed and then you will laugh at me and shout at me and call me names like all the other people do and then go out yourself whilst I have to stay in here with these walls and these windows and this carpet and this chair and that stupid broken mirror over there. God she is such a conniving fat cunt.

Well, Molly? What do you want to do?

I aint going out. I don't want to get changed. I aint hungry and there aint nothing you can do about it.

Fine, Molly. I shall clean up and then make some lunch and prepare your dinner for tonight. I shall go out myself and enjoy the sunshine.

Yeah you fucking will. Stupid fat slag. Leave me here whist you go out. Leave me here to turn into some sort of goblin or hermit or one of those weird Gremlin things. Yeah, you go out and have fun in the sun and buy some things to try and make yourself look pretty and smear that shitty fucking make-up all over your pathetic face and God I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you so much it hurts and I am one day gonna scratch that ugly face off your head and watch as you run around the room screaming bloody gore filth out of ya ruined mouth.

One day I'll do it, one day I will do all the things I think, and you will be sorry.

You'll all be sorry.

# downward spiral

Concrete walls dripping death.

Flaking ceilings shower ghosts with white petals.

Glass tubes of light clinging to ceiling, lighting the room in colours of brown-yellow-green-white. The light is wet, alive, dancing in rainbow waves.

Dark shadows hold the room hostage and rats scurry in the gloom, their filthy little feet tick and tack on the floor like needles in a clothes factory. The shadows are like caves from an ancient story, you daren't go in there, bats and bears and ghouls and men with knives and sharp tongues and hard cocks live in those dark shadow caves. The sodden light is absorbed into the sponge darkness like a whores love.

Rusting hulks of machines sit on dusty floors like sleeping beasts. These machines are dead. Useless steel cogs and copper cables and decay bitten panels haunt the basement, a mockery to the priests that practiced industrial exorcism upon them. An engineer once saw their fate and did fuck all about it. The machines can't be moved, they are as imprisoned here, below the streets, as the men and women above whom live in the towers that reach to the stars but can't quite make it.

Wet floor. Oil and water soak into green moss covered concrete. Cracks release weeds that grow in knots and twist around anything trying to cling to a life that is a mirror to the human scum fucking shit filth above.

Under dark corners, beneath a steel staircase, sits two men, both naked, apart from torn pants and their own fleeting souls. Their bodies shake like strangled snakes, star sparkled eyes drift form here to there and sometimes back again. Eyes that are sunken into pale faces which look into the void that has skull fucked its way into their minds pulsate wildly and try to grapple with a reality that would love to see them stabbed and left to rot in a spunk filled bath surrounded by ghost white noise of a TV youth. Pot marked arms, blue veins stretched like wires popping from skin in chaotic lines. Sweat pours from greasy skin, tears of a raped angel, fresh cuts and sores fester green decay like a whale's dead body on a beach. Death is hovering, smearing their life force across a misty window, the fates draw smiley faces to mock them as these men will never smile again.

Moans of forbidden truths hang from both mouths and discussions of madmen occur through gritted teeth and jarring jaws. Tall trees and wide plains of grass drifting down into sweet rivers of life giving water parts into cracks that go deep into the earth. It's red down there. It's all dead down there.

Both men have no clue who or what they are or why they exist and if there is a light or not or people or things and if there is a way out or a way in and all that they are is in front and behind of them and they can see it but don't know what it is. Stars and planets align but they don't see it and the seas part and the ships rise up from their sunken crypts just for them, it's all for them, everything that has happened from the birth of the Universe till now has all been for them to reach this point.

The fat man is consumed, eaten alive by a jaguar of the high mountains. He is shit out through a puckered bleeding arsehole as a full grown tiger and he roams the African Plaines seeking a meal. Fresh meat, running meat, squirming meat, meat meat meat I like meat, and warm blood that trickles down his mouth and chin and around his cock and balls glistens faintly and speaks of what he is and where we all have come from. The other man twitches and squirms on massive kneecaps along the floor as he needs to hide, Christ he needs to hide. Hide from the eyes in the walls that are trying to find him. Witch hunt, witch hunt, let's grab a witch's cunt. He tries to hunker beneath the machine but there is no space there so he screams as the eyes see him and hands stretch out, concrete hands with copper fingers, and they grab him and crush him and fingers are forced into his body and they squeeze him so tight that his brain is forced out from his skull and his own eyes plop out onto the floor and he can see his fetid blood seep from cuts and his cock explodes with red blood white cream semen gore and he is hard, so God damned hard it hurts and the industrial grime hands let go and he falls to the floor with a reverberating thud of skin to concrete.

Traveling through space he is more than human, he is a life giving force of energy seeking a shell to hold more life. Cock sniffs out hole and he finds one that is wet and ready and cock energy life force is thrust up into that hole and birth giving juice is pumped into shell with deep screams of pain joy ecstasy love loss death pity and those sounds fill the machine room till it shakes with the power and threatens to fall.

Both men look to the ceiling and as their eyes close flakes of paint drip onto them like deaths fragile words and together they drift from our world and are lost in the vacuum of the nothing that awaits us because there is no God to save you

there is no God to save you

there is no God to save you

there is NO GOD TO SAVE YOU.

Especially here, in the rotten Triangle.

# an apology

Hello?

Yeah, it's me.

Yeah, I know it's late.

Well I've been thinking aint I.

Christ, I'm calling to say sorry for......

Wait...What? What was that?

Nothing. Who's that talking in the background?

Yeah there was. I heard a bloke talking.

Yeah I did. Is that Charlie? Its Charlie isnt it?

Yes it is. Don't you fucking lie to me.

Shut up, shut your fucking mouth you stupid fucking bitch. Fuck, I've been out here in the cold and the rain all night fucking long busting my balls over what I did and thinking to myself that it aint right and that I should do something about it and all that time you've been up there sucking that pretty boys cock.

Don't lie to me you fucking cunt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, just talking. Just talking with a mouth full of cock and balls and spunk you dirty little slut. Put him on the phone, Heather, put him on the phone.

Stop lying and put him on the fucking phone NOW.

Aaashutyafuckingmouth, ya know what, I'm coming over there. I'm coming over there right now and if that two faced skinny arsed pretty boy fuck aint outtathere I swear to God I am going to smash his fucking face in and throw him off the fucking balcony and then I'm gonna throw you off too and the both of ya can fuck in hell.

Craig slams the receiver down hard and the payphone releases the change but it isnt collected by him, just left for the junkies and the tramps. He rushes home, through the rain and the puddles and the cold wind. The sky is a dark nothing of white rain and orange street lights. His eyes are a blaze of blood fuelled hate, burning his sockets, scratching his skin with pin pricks of revenge.

What the fuck has he done to deserve this? Yeah, alright, he punched her a few times and got rid of that bastard baby in her gut, which now thinking about it probably wasn't even his, but he didn't deserve to be cheated on. He does everything for that happy go lucky cock hungry slag and this is how she repays him.

The streets are empty, lights in the flats act like stars and the rain is like a thin film of acetate over everything. Into the Triangle, passed the shops and the alleyway and the building site, and all are nothing to him right now. He would run across half the earth, through rivers of shit and factories of death to get to his flat, to get to her, to get to him.

He flings open the door to his block of flats and charges up the stairs hoping to Christ that the little pretty boy is still up there so that he can punch the living piss out of his stupid face and if anybody were to get in his way then he would beat the shit out of them too. He gets his keys out but the anger flooding his system stops him from putting the key in the lock and so he does the only thing he can think of and kicks the door in with one swift swing of his right foot.

The door crashes open and bits of wood fly through the air and Craig has to push the remains of the door aside using his jacket to protect him from the splinters.

The flat is quiet. The lights are on in each room that Craig searches but Heather and Charlie have gone. Frantic searching slows as the realisation hits him and hits him like a tonne of concrete.

Her wardrobe is empty and his clothes smells of piss and his shirts are torn and every piece of clothing he has seems to have been attacked with such hate it actually upsets the angered man.

The suitcase is gone and on his side of the bed there is a wet patch that has a familiar salty stink to it.

In the kitchen the cupboards have been emptied, the fridge is open, the light blinks but the shelves are bare, and the carton of milk that was in there this morning now lies in the sink, its contents sprayed up the walls and cover the window and drip down like white rain.

Craig slams the fridge door shut and a note gracefully drifts down onto his right foot.

He leans over and picks it up:

Craig,

The child wasn't yours. It was Charlie's. I've been sleeping with him for two years.

You will never see me again. My dad is going to kill you and dump your body in the river you low life small cocked fucking loser. I hope that there is an afterlife and you get fucked in the arse every night. Enjoy the rest of your life.

Heather.

Craig scrunches up the note and hurls it into the sink. From the hallway there comes the sound of footsteps and voices he knows all too well. He takes off his jacket and grabs a knife from the kitchen draw and readies himself.

The next time Heather hears about Craig is when she looks in the local paper and see that his body has been dredged up in the river and that the police have no leads because in the Triangle there are no leads, just dead ends.

A constant stream of dead ends.

# my fathers eyes

They say I have my father's eyes, but I haven't seen the things he has seen.

I'm sorry for leaving you out there in the cold, sorry for closing the door on you when you needed me. But I had to. I had seen my fate that day when my father lost it and the walls of my childhood came tumbling down. I can't be like my father, I can't be like that. I won't let it happen.

I'm like him, they all say it. I don't want to be him. Always angry, always wanting more, but that more was always out of reach. He couldn't be happy. So he took everything that was his and ended up with nothing but memories.

He killed them. You don't know that. Now you do.

It wasn't an accident, there was no burst, no tyre screeching, no concrete wall and death type accident. He did it. Strangled them both with his bare hands that look like mine. My sister and my mother. Dead.

But not me.

Not me.

He didn't kill me.

He didn't kill ME.

He made me stand there in the kitchen, piss dribbling down my leg, my naked body shaking, the man that I look like made me watch him strangle the life from them both as the T.V fizzed in the front room and the tap dripped in the sink above me. My sister died quickly, she was little and had such a small neck. When we played she acted like a doll and on the floor she acted like one again but for the last time, and that will forever more be in my thoughts. My mum only said one word to me but I didn't hear it as I was so scared and nothing of me seemed to work except for the piss and the tears and that fucking dripping tap and the forever fizzing T.V. drowned out everything but the screams and the sobs.

I will never know what that word was she said to me.

Maybe it was love.

I hope it was run.

It could have been sorry, but she doesn't have to be sorry.

I would have said run, if it were me.

I'm saying run to you now so that you and little Eliza don't suffer the same as my sister and my mum did.

I have nothing to give to you but to tell you that you will be a far better family without me than with me. I am man enough to know that I cannot be a good father to Eliza and a good husband to you.

They all say I am like my dad, maybe they wouldn't if they knew the truth, but they don't, and so they say what they see.

Get out of here, get out of the Triangle, and go back to the city with your parents. You will be safe, Eliza will be safe. Just get out, run, take the money I have given you and run.

Time to go.

Good bye.

J

#  reinforced

Time moves on slowly enough so that you can hear the concrete crack and the reinforced steel groan. Mould spreads, the rots mingle and digs in further until it cannot be gotten rid of.

Worlds collapse, worlds begin, and yet, the Triangle still stands, lord of all its creations, both below and within its towering walls.

Depression and exhilaration, joking and hating, agony and ecstasy, love and war, they are all spirits that swarm and coalesce in this place, and they will do so until the man has had enough and brings the big yellow machinery and rips this place from the skin of the earth like a cancerous tumour.

Then a new dawn will break upon the black soil and the Triangle will be nothing more than a memory, a nightmare, a digital footnote in the world's eulogy.

But those concrete walls are made to endure, and they will do for a long time.

The walls will be adapted, forced to live on even though what lies beneath them should have long ago been made dust of.

It will go on until the fires of the sun consume us all.

End

