Later.Still
Later. Still.By
Christopher Skolik
Maybe human beings get through life by focusing their attention down to the smallest details, those soap opera comings and goings that make up the flickering magic lantern show of day to day existence, the little things that make life worth living, the details that stand between us and the chasm.
Maybe we are not really designed for total awareness of the harsh random cruelties of life, the cold limitless potential, so to protect ourselves we narrow our field of vision, or we turn away.
There are times when the harsh facts of existence make there presence felt.
Late at night, alone in bed; a time for painful truths.
Calvin lay on his side, the twisted sheets of a broken and disturbed nights sleep coiling about him. Another night spent watching the sweeping light and shadow patterns that passing cars project across the ceiling and walls.
First traces of dawn, purple drizzle turning the streets all leathery, fragmentary bird song embroidering the early traffic sounds of Hull.
Calvin turns over.
His reputation made severe demands upon him, demands that needed to be filled. Reputations need to be fed. Offerings had to be made, trading acts of violence for status. The vicious and cruel things he had done left there mark, for in order to do such things he dehumanised his victims, and in the process he also dehumanised himself.
He feels the scar on his upper right arm; it aches in the early morning autumn chill. War wounds from the streets, alleyways and pubs of the city.
He feels tired. But it is not an exhaustion of the body, of the flesh, but of somewhere deeper, down into the bones, the very DNA.
Across the inky abstract landscape of his bedroom, the bedside table, he reaches across for the tobacco and cigarette papers-by accident picking up the folded paper with the address, he lets it drop from his fingers.
Daylight is taking hold outside, giving definition to the world, and gradually drives away the shadows, exposing the concerns of the day.
Viewing what he has to do in a detached, technical way, he moves about the flat. ‘Collecting’ a grand from some drug dealers, it would wait till afternoon.
The radio is on, playing oldies, ‘Band of gold’ by Freda Payne.
Walking the streets off toward Anlaby Road.
The drizzle holds fast, the chill blast from the North Sea.
The orange glare from the chemist, liquid across the damp pavement.
A thin dog lapping up vomit from a bus shelter.
It wasn’t late; days like this just felt it.
He didn’t need to look at the address, but he carried the scrap of paper in his pocket anyhow. He knew exactly where he was going.
The front door is open, the lock useless from having been kicked in so many times. The hallway stinks, bits of bikes, piles of bills. The banister loose beneath his hand. The landing dark; the bulb has blown long ago.
On the first floor landing Calvin found the door. The concealed crowbar slides down from his jacket sleeve, into his hand and he pushes the flat door, it gives easily.
The flat is small, dank, gloomy, a mess of clothes, paper and litter. It smells like a neglected cat.
Methodically he checked the nearest rooms and finding them empty moves to the kitchen, stepping over bin liners, carrier bags.
He pushes the door aside and finds a scene that hits him like a fist to the solar plexus.
She is small, long dark hair concealing her face which is slumped forward across the table, amongst the piles of dishes and filth stacked high. Her right arm extended, syringe in her left hand.
Calvin can only stare at this scene, human devastation. As though all human pain, self destruction, and loss had been crystallised, and focused down to this single image.
The mountains of filthy plates, the flies. Bottles of milk gone yellow and solid, clothes banked up in stinking mounds. The only clean space was where the spoon water and heroin are placed on the kitchen table. Priorities.
Kicking carrier bags away as he approaches, Calvin shakes her shoulder; she moans partial words, from her stupor she grapples her way back to consciousness.
She pushes her self up, moves hair from her face with the back of her hand. She looks 15, but her eyes look ancient, glassy, like those of a Victorian doll.
He did not expect this. Violence he could deal with, but this? She could have been his daughter, and maybe some part of him wished she were. For then his response would be clearer, better defined.
He goes through the motions.
“I want the money.”
“Wha? Wha? Money?” Her voice thin, tremulous.
“Yes. The money. The grand. Now.” He had to dig deep to make it sound aggressive, this was not easy, not easy at all. He felt like an actor who can remember his lines but has no conviction in the part he is playing.
The girl looks around; she scans the kitchen as if she might find the money or an explanation amongst the chaos. Her eyes close in on the crowbar in Calvin’s hand.
Calvin sweeps the plates from the table-they explode across the floor in fragments. The girl focuses suddenly to where her heroin had been, panic behind her eyes, but Calvin has been careful not to touch it.
“Where is the fucking money?”
“Don’t have it. No, I don’t-” She almost sounded as if she where interrogating herself.
Calvin makes a grab for the bag of heroin, she is too slow, and as he snatches it away from her, her whole body dissolves into spastic pain; “No please, I don’t have it, Really, Please…I don’t care-you can have anything, really. I don’t mind, but please, not my gear, please, I have to have it-do whatever you want-”
Even though she is stood, her tiny frame and pleading gave an impression she was on her knees. Body convulsed, movement’s jerky, offering her self for a few crumbs of heroin.
He places it on the table. She falls upon it as a doting parent might upon a hurt infant.
Calvin turns and walks from the flat.
On the route home he slides the crowbar into a litter bin.
czkolyk@hotmail.co.uk
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