{Hello! Welcome to the first installment of my second series, "L a s t L i v i n g S o u l s". For best quality reading, listen to "A Rat's Nest" (Thom Yorke). Enjoy, and if you're up to it, please rate and comment. Thank you!}
: : .L a s t . L i v i n g . S o u l s. : :
..
A dream:
We are standing in field of dirt. Puffs of wind spin debris into swelling dust-devils that swell and release. Bits of wrapper flutter to the east. Emptied soda containers roll a curved path past our feet. We surrounded by nighttime, and we are alone.
Then a light begins to glow above us. It is a dusty, LED green. We turn our heads, and we realize we are surrounded by things. They are large things, painted in cheap hues that were, perhaps, colourful once but have faded so completely we cannot differ the colours from one another. The things tower above us like grimy metal giants. Their skins are chipped. Their joins are crusted. Without the light shed from the bulbs decorating them, we would guess they were obsolete. It is the fairground we've seen somewhere before, but cannot remember where.
Wind whistles through their skeletons. We quickly become nervous. Through the looming contraptions, we see a glittering span of inky blackness in the dust and nightscape. We want to go in that direction. Arriving instantly (as one does in a dream), we find ourselves standing in the shadow of an enormous merry-go-round, beyond which stretches an endless inky sea.
A mechanical moaning creaks through the carousel. The wind gives it a slow spin. We become quite frightened in the gaze of a thousand depthless eyes. The ground beneath us shifts. We are riding a chipping porcelain horse. The ride has begun. We're turning. Lights are all about us now: mesmerizing, bright and saccharine. The machine song sings out from within the body of the carousel. We are turning – and turning – and turning…
And suddenly, we are speeding. Our porcelain horse has begun an up-and-down motion in terrifyingly quick convulsions. Its eyes are alive and burning, watching our eyes, its mouth open wide in a soundless holler. We hold on for our lives. The noisy landscape burns into a single mass before our eyes, which we cannot close no matter how hard we try.
Something terrible is going to happen, but we cannot stop it. If we fall, we will fly off – if we stay, we will be seized. Its body becomes so large and black and glistening we cannot see. We cannot see and we want everything to stop and be still so we can think, but it cannot stop. We cannot stop it… It rises up… It watches us… It's watching me -
And with a blink, the ride is over. The dream is done.
..
In the middle of an alley, a little grey ghost floats up to the moon. Its visibility is made possible by the light of the alley's lone streetlamp. The tiny cloud body is rimmed by its honey glow. It wafts skyward until it disappears in the black of the sky, swallowed-up by a giant, starless void.
My eyes linger on the sky and then fall to the light of the lamp. I let the florescent gold burn into my retinas until all the world begins to crawl away, until it's only the light and I. Myself and the light. Me. The light. Me.
The iron door beside me opens with a screech of old metal hinges. A large, fat head pokes out of the space between the door and the wall. Beady eyes search around until they spot me.
"'Oy, kid," says the head, "'Ou comin' in or whah? These faggots are beginnin' t'get anxious."
I scratch my temple and shut my eyes. "Yeah, gimme a minute. I'll be in."
The head nods, crumples into a pudgy grin, and pokes back into the darkness. The door closes with another moan of metal-on-rusty metal.
I heave a heavy sigh, adjust my position against the wall. My hair shifts forward with the movement of my head, making a fortress of fringe. I bend and pick up the small, curvaceous leather case lying at my feet. Contained within the case is the thing that has become my companion through the tribulations of the universe, and the closest I've ever come to a livelihood, an art form, and a successful long-term relationship. It also has a name.
I tuck what's left of my fag between my lips and put the free hand into the pocket of my jacket. Somberly, I bid goodbye to the sky, the lamp, and the memory of the tiny nicotine cloud. I pick myself up off the wall, pull open the giant iron door that smells of old blood, and let it shut behind me.
Time to make some money.
Oh, god… air!
Sweet, fresh gallons of it. It fills my lungs and empties out again, smelling of salt and wind and rain and fresh things. There is nothing to compare to the stew of stinks in Erney's Black Hole: a collaboration of lager, old piss, shit, new piss, ciggies, and a multihued spectrum of body odors. Breathing real air after being in that for four hours is enough to make a grown woman cry.
Once I've gotten my fill, I make toward my bike, which is a vintage moped in a beautiful pupil-black. I set myself on the seat and pound my boot to the ignition bar, the shapely case of my instrument strapped securely to my back. The bike purrs darkly and I'm about to pull out when in comes the creaking of a heavy metal door.
"'Old on there, luv." I put both feet onto the ground and see the fat head from earlier emerging from the bar. An enormous spherical stomach trails beneath it.
"I wan'ed t'tank you prop'ley," he drawled, staggering forward, "... fo' yo' services..."
I grimace as his gribbly belly closes in. His bare red head is covered in a thick sheen of sweat.
"Hold on, Earney –"
"No, 'oo 'old on!" His black eyes are heavily lidded and seem to be having quite a time of focusing on me, darting to and fro. "I wan'... wan' t'tank 'oo like – " he's interrupted by a small burp " – like a man!"
My shoulders slump. Earney Blake, manager of Earney's Black Hole, has been my employer for the last two months. He founded the thumb-sized bar in 1992, after collecting the payment on his mobile home, which he sold to an elderly Arabian couple with eight children. He purchased the building – formerly a liquor shop/ gambling hall/ bingo bar for the Blue Poppy Society – and renovated it with his earnings. In less than a year, it was one the shadiest of pubs in Eastbourne hosting a weekly rotation of entertainment, including the talents of three stand-up comics, a 97-year-old organist, and a scabby young man billed as "The Bottomless Pit".
He halted his advance for a moment and struggled to keep balanced. "Come on, now... Yo shift 'asn't ended yet."
"Yes it has," I retorted. My patience was waning. "Just go back to the bar, please. I can't let you roam around like this."
"'Oo's roamin'? I'm just tryin' to be a –" another belch "- a gen'leman."
His thick head is blotched with red; the bits that aren't are a sickly white. He starts toward me again and I shift my weight. "Honestly, Earney, it's too late for this..."
"Is never too late fo' whah I'm plannin' on doin'..." His meaty bald head splits in a sleepy rendition of what he probably believes to be a sultry grin, "'Oo mi'h wanna stall tha' bi – OOHHF!"
Earney's thin pale lips twist into a tiny, soundless "O". His giant form doubles over and he reaches his meaty hands toward where my boot had stalled in the middle of his trousers. His beady eyes shut tightly in what I imagine is the largest serving of pain his numb brain could register tonight.
I wait for the soft "tuff" of his knees hitting the dirt, the cue to remove my foot. I reignite the ignition, twist the handles and ride into the night. Earney rolls on his side and assumes what I imagine to have been a terribly chubby fetal position.
Sea air whips my bangs into a frenzy - it feels fantastic. The air is clean, the clouds grey and milky, the dark road split by my headlights. I'm riding my favorite, endless arching turn that runs along a stout stone cliff. Black waves crash below.
My head is heavy with the lateness and a slight throbbing headache. The idea of losing my position at the Hole was grim, which was made grimmer by the realization that as dreadful a place as it was, it'd been my only creative outlet for the last seven weeks. Seven weeks of serenading the drunken outcasts of London; seven weeks of crying things I only half-believed into a mic and hearing myself through really shitty reception; so many hours I'll never regain, drowning in a pool of warm, rancid beer and spittle on the floor, or floating somewhere in the head of a piss-stinking regular, thinking as much about my art as they would the workings of the trade routes of Bosnia. I know well as anyone that they come only for cheap drink and to watch the movements of a woman's body; my poetry is above them.
The turn begins to even. The stone of the cliff ends and bricks begin. Traffic lights blink twenty blocks ahead.
The sound of the sea begins to fade as the tide swells outward, and suddenly, my skin prickles. The throbbing in my head is replaced by a sense of forewarning, though I wish it wasn't. It isn't often that my senses pick up oncoming danger, but when they do, I'd always rather push forward than turn back. So I keep on riding.
- until I feel the turbulence, followed by a hopeless 'PAK!' of the engine and a sober slowing of my wheels. I come to a complete stop in the middle of the pitch-dark road, darker now that my headlight's gone out. I wait a moment, not wanting to accept the situation. Once I do, I swing my leg off the seat and give the piping a kick slightly softer than what I'd given Earney.
"You moldy piece of chicken shit, you!" I holler at it, watching as it topples to its side.
My neck hairs stand on end in the silence. Something moves in.
"'Ello, luv."
My breath catches and I attempt running for it, but my escape is denied by two thick forearms. My feet lift from the ground. The acidic stench of alcohol, B.O. and... something I can't identify monopolizes my nostrils. The heat of Earney's stomach feels disgusting pressed against my back. "Lemme go, you tubby bastard!!"
He exhales, chuckling darkly into the canal of my ear. My binds are too tight for even the slightest of movements... and I realize his strength is strangely great, drunk as he may be. I begin to wonder how he'd gotten here.
"You migh' as well stop kickin' about," he snarls, "Yo' outnumba'd."
He turns and shows me four men standing in the alley from which he'd come. Each of them was as large, if not larger than Earney himself, and terribly smug. They were tattooed, laughing, elbowing one another. I realize then how deeply in shit I was.
"I said, let me go!!"
I attempt to plant my heel into the spot that should still be ringing him with pain, but this does nothing but increases the group's enjoyment.
"Sorry, luv," Earney growls, bringing me farther into the alley. His diction no longer drawls drunkenly. In fact, he's eerily sober.
The men close in. I shut my eyes.
"'Ey. Wot's 'appening n'ere?"
Earney's grip loosens. "'Oo's tha'?"
I open my eyes. The men have stopped to look over Earney's shoulder. Earney's head is turned.
"Righ', well - I was wond'rin if tha' gurl 'oo've got there was awrigh', 'cuz she's been screaming 'er 'ead off fo' ages."
The men's expressions glaze over with annoyance. Earney turns toward the alley's entrance, and I spot a thin shape is silhouetted in the light of the moon.
"Woh'?" The men move in.
"Well... I suggest you put 'er down, or - ahhh."
The threat is interrupted by the fist of one of the men. They take turns pounding the intruder, grunting with each smack. The stranger whimpers with every hit, and it's something of a grunt-symphony: smack, grunt, whimper, smack.
The pummeling had begun and was concluded in the totality of thirty-five seconds. "Right, lads," says Earney, rejuvenating the crushing grip on my torso, "Fun's over now."
"Wasn't any fun in tha'..." whines one of the men.
"Let's get on with it, now!" Earney was impatient. I let go a sigh as the men turned from the bruised body of what had almost been my savior.
Then, by the will of some sort of Providence, there came a wailing cry from down the road
"Oi! Shit!" The tailing man of the lot froze, his eyes watching the road, "Is the fuzz!"
The men's expressions animate with fright. Earney gave a low, guteral growl. "Aw, hell!"
I felt his body twist slightly, and next I know I'm crashing to the ground. My left side stings with the collision, and I cry out.
The men shout at one another, filling the alley with hollers and fast footsteps that intertwine with the nearing siren scream. They file out of the alley, but Earney stays. He looks down at me with eyes lit with moonlight. I saw in them nothing I'd seen there before, and for the first time in a long while, I feel terrified.
He tears his gaze away and follows his lackeys out of the alley. I watch him leave, steps over the body of the hero-turned-pile of bruised meat. I shut my eyes again, this time in a swell of relief, and listen as the last of the voices are swallowed by the siren's cry. I breathe heavily and wait for the siren to pass – apparently without taking notice of the overturned bike on the road – and take my time picking myself up.
My ribs and chest are sore from the constriction. My side aches something awful. The throbbing in my skull had returned twofold, but I knew mine was nothing next to the aches and pains of my almost-rescuer. I call out, "'Ey, kid. You alright?"
Well, I knew he wasn't. He's still draped in the dark, but as I near, the milky clouds begin to reopen.
"Oi. Kid." I kneel at his side and place my palm on him. Shake him, gently. "Come on, now."
The clouds part in a gust of wind. The moonlight brightens so suddenly I'm forced to squint. From across the road, the black sheen of my bike catches it and winks like a low star. The boy lets out a pitchy, lilting groan and slowly rolls onto his back. My eyes fill with the image of his face.
His face...
Oh, Jesus!
{PS - Plastic Beach is absolutely bangin'!!
Chapter 2 to come soon~ Thank you for reading!}