Little Racers STREET

1,101 words.

Smoke

Hank David bought cigarettes by the carton. If he wasn’t smoking, then he wasn’t doing anything.

“They’re bad for you,” that’s what everyone said to him, but Hank was still going strong at the wrong side of sixty and he didn’t have so much as a cough to show for it. He imagined living until 120 and when someone asked him for the secret of his long life, he’d thank the tobacco companies for it.

“I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.” That’s what they’d say to him, like sheep. They’ve been told one thing by their science and they refuse to believe anything else. That was their problem. They were just like him, weren’t they, but he had the sense to realise it. He was far better than them.

They mock him for believing in God, too. “No evidence,” that’s what they say. What evidence have they got? A couple of fossils, they’ve no idea how long they’ve been there. It’s not like they’ve been alive for the last 6,000 years so they can possibly know that dinosaurs weren’t here 5,000 years ago. How could they know? They just guess, only their guesses were somehow “right” and Hank’s guesses, Hank’s faith was somehow “wrong,” but when he asked them to prove it they had nothing more than he had. Theories. What made theirs better than his?

He was already proving science wrong, one day at a time by going on in perfect health. There was a chance he’d been placed on Earth by God specifically for this purpose. He was there to sow the seeds of doubt in the minds of the scientific community but, well, that seemed like an awful lot of work, really.

A sign was all he needed, and he looked up to the sky, or his ceiling at least, and thought that if God was to offer him a sign now he’d do it. He’d make the effort, he’d make them all believe.

He waited for thirty seconds, but there was no sign, and the only effort he decided to make was to paint the ceiling one day. He hadn’t noticed that stain up there before.

He’d do it later. Tomorrow, maybe. For now it was time to look at his watch, and no matter what it said he’d light a cigarette. He didn’t even notice what time it was, it was just a subconscious tick that he’d developed some time in the past, maybe once he’d needed justification for a smoke and it had stuck. He put a cigarette in his mouth and pulled a lighter from his pocket. He flicked it open and there was no flame. He tried again, but still there was nothing. He reached to the table by the sofa and picked up a disposable lighter, which he could see was full of fluid. He pressed the button but despite the spark, there was no flame. He kept trying and still the lighter failed. He looked back to the ceiling and said nothing, but smiled.

It was time to buy a new lighter.

Physique

She was perfect, like an angel had been sent down from Heaven to brighten his day, too perfect. She was wearing a red dress that clung to her and left nothing to the imagination. Well, that wasn’t strictly true, his imagination was running wild. In his imagination, there was no red dress. The breasts that were pushed up by her bra retained their shape when it was gone. His eyes traced the shape of her figure as she walked. Her long brown hair swung from side to side and shone in the sunlight, as if she had a glow all about her. Her legs. Her legs. They were taking her away.

She was perfect, and he had to do something. He couldn’t let her just walk by him and out of his life, because he would never forgive himself. If she was so perfect, then there was a reason she’d been placed here now at this moment, in front of him. It was fate, and to let her go would be as good as throwing in the towel and just dropping dead.

He had to do something.

He had to get her attention.

He wolf-whistled at her.

To say that he regretted it immediately would be a lie, because he didn’t realise what he’d done for, oh, two or three seconds. Those seconds were the happiest of his life. He had got her attention, the woman who would one day be his wife, the mother of his children, he had got her attention and she was turning to him. She would run to him and throw herself in to his arms and kiss him passionately on the, hang on a minute. She wasn’t smiling. That wasn’t supposed to be happening. Where were the open arms, where were the, what was that? She’d stuck her middle finger up at him and rolled her eyes and now she was quickening her pace and she was leaving. She was around the corner. She was gone. That was when he regretted it.

“Wait,” he said in a voice so pathetic he barely even heard it. He reached out an arm as if there was some string trailing behind her that he could use to pull her back, but she was gone, and when she went back the other way she’d take some other route.

“What did you go and do that for?” said Tel.

“I don’t know.”

“She were right lovely, ain’t no way to treat a woman, that.”

“I don’t know.”

“You alright, Pete?”

“I don’t know.”

“Give us a bad reputation, people like you,” Tel said, and he went back to work, crouching down over a low wall and revealing that his trousers didn’t quite fit.

How could he find her? He could apologise. He would apologise and she would forgive him and they would kiss and, oh, it was no use. He would never feel those lips on his. He would never feel his hands on her waist. Her hand in his hand.

But wait! A woman appeared from around the corner. Her short blonde hair glowing in the sun like a halo. She was perfect.

Metronomy

Last night I went to see Metronomy. Well, sort of, Metronomy were there and I was absolutely there for that single reason, but it was actually Two Door Cinema Club headlining. And Tribes and Azealia Banks were on the bill too. More on her later.

The evening started with a trip to an independent videogame store, because I had no idea it was there and I can’t remember the last time I saw one. It was full of DVDs. Okay, not really, there were some games too including some bizarrely excellent and rare games that you don’t expect to find on the high street. All of the Atelier Iris games on PS2, and Grandia II as well, amongst others. Weird.

Then, pre-gig, we went to KFC because we were hungry. If they make as much effort cleaning their kitchen as they do their toilets, I kind of wish we hadn’t. There was also the most persistent beggar I’ve ever encountered. Normally when you tell someone you have no change they move on. He hung around and despite repeatedly telling him that she had no change, demanded that my friend open her purse. “Have a look, have a look,” he said. She didn’t, so he seemed to get bored and move on – only to return about four minutes later and ask if we had any change, having completely forgotten that he’d asked us already. Brixton, ladies and gentlemen.

Azealia Banks was up first, with a set that made me feel so, so old. Seriously, is this what the kids are in to these days? She was a bit much. The sound didn’t really seem to be set up for her style, and so all I could hear was the word “nigger,” over and over again. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used so many times in such a short space of time, and when it wasn’t that it was various other swearwords. These words were clear as day, whatever else she was saying, well, I have no idea what the context was at all. Then she performed what appeared to be a tribute to Amy Winehouse, but performed the one song that Amy Winehouse didn’t write and so it turned out to be an accidental tribute to The Zutons. Meaningful.

Tribes were next, and I remember so little. My main thoughts were “hmm, I know this song, but where do I know it from?” They were, well, they were unspectacular.

And then the main event! Well, the main event if you were me. Enter Metronomy, who begin with Some Written and then go on to The Bay, which is unofficially the best song ever recorded. If the world had blown up at that moment, I wouldn’t feel like I’d have wasted my life at all. They carried on, and I sang along to every word because I’m a nerd, hopefully in a volume that was audible only to me. When they played You Could Easily Have Me, I made up my own words to sing along to because that track doesn’t have any. Okay, I didn’t do that, I’m not that much of a nerd. Biggest reaction from the non-me parts of the crowd was for The Look, a song I sent to my dad the previous evening whose reaction was something along the lines of “that’s not as bad as I was expecting it to be!” I’ve no idea what he was expecting, but it was probably something… heavier.

Metronomy left, I was a happy boy, I need to go and see Metronomy again.

Two Door Cinema Club played their set and they were great too. Not as great, obviously, but their album has been on my amazon wishlist for a year and they did nothing to suggest I should remove it. A pretty light show.

A good night.

Gigs. I need to do them more. I do not need to review them more.

METRONOMY!

Din

The noise seemed to follow her like a ghost wherever she moved. It was within her. It was without her. It was left it was right it was straight ahead. If she moved from one place to another the noise grew louder, and if she moved back to where she was it grew louder again.

She left the house. She searched for the source but there was no source. Was she the source?

The noise went around her, went through her. It was loud, it was unrelenting. It was like being surrounded by a swarm of millions of bees. Each one of them invisible and with no sting, but with wings loud enough to shatter eardrums. Millions.

She ran, but the bees went with her. They chased her. They didn’t stop. She didn’t stop. In the distance she saw a man standing on a street corner. He was reading a newspaper and smoking. He looked at peace. She ran to him, and he turned to her when he heard her footsteps. She saw him see her, and she saw his face change to one of unease as she drew closer. “He can hear it,” she thought.

She shouted at him to ask him if he could hear the noise. Each word came out louder than the last but she could hear none of them over the noise. He could hear none of them because he didn’t recognise the words she used. They spoke the same language but somehow the volume distorted the words and they came out as nothing.

“I don’t understand,” he said to her. “I don’t understand,” he shouted.

She didn’t hear him the first time, she didn’t hear him the second. She thought she had read his lips but she couldn’t be sure and how could she be? She could hardly ask him. It was no good. She left him standing there, with his newspaper hanging at one side and his cigarette hanging to the other, as if her presence had sent him lame.

She saw nobody else.

She walked and walked alone, never escaping the noise that she knew must have been inside her.

She could take it no more. How could she?

She came to what would once have been a small shop. Two large windows were boarded up and between them a small porch led to a door which was also boarded up. The letters in the sign had been long missing, but she could see that it had once read “Adam’s,” she wondered whether that was a family name, and where the family could now be. Perhaps it was a man, and he was gone too.

She sat down in the doorway with her hands over her ears. Still it went on. Still it went on. It wouldn’t stop until she stopped.

She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, and soon fell into a sleep that was deep enough to block the sound. She dreamed.

A man approached the sleeping woman, and checked that she was breathing. Satisfied that she was okay, he left. Then he turned, suddenly. A noise.

Isolated

You will be the cause of their eventual destruction.

It will not be your fault.

One morning you will wake up and you will not be there any more. You will go downstairs and your husband will be sitting at the table like he used to do every morning, and opposite him will be your son whose name is Jimmy or Johnny or Jamie or Chris, and neither of them will notice that you have arrived. You will perform your morning rituals, you will watch as he performs some of them for you. He will ask your son if he is ready for school. He will usher him out of the door at half past eight and will hope that he gets there on time. He will pour himself a glass of whiskey and will look at his watch. It will be time for work. He will leave the glass on the table and you will shout at him and tell him to put it in the sink but he has already left without a word and is on his way to work.

At work they will notice that he has been drinking.

They will send him home.

He will arrive home and you won’t have done anything. There is nothing you could have done. The glass will be where he left it, and he will pick it up before even removing his coat. He will finish the bottle of whiskey and begin another. If there is not another he will drive to the shop to find one. He will come back a few minutes later, or he won’t.

He will walk through the door, already drinking, he could not wait.

When your son comes home from school he will run upstairs to his bedroom and close the door. He will move a chest of drawers behind it so that the handle can’t be pulled downwards and the door can’t be opened from outside. He will exclude you. He won’t know. He will stay there until morning. He won’t come down for dinner. He won’t expect it any more. If he needs the toilet he will wait until your husband is sleeping it off. You husband will never sleep it off.

On another morning you will wake up and you still will not be there. It will be colder. You will go downstairs and they will be sitting there. Perhaps your son will be in the chair you used to sit in. He will mention your name and you will turn to him. Your husband will turn to him too and will they both look down in silence.

You will not be coming back.

The son (is he yours any more?) will go to school and won’t come home until late. Your husband (who else would have him?) won’t go to work any more. One day Jimmy or Johnny or Jamie or Chris won’t come home from school and your husband won’t notice. The next morning he will call for him and you will be standing next to him in silence because you will know he is not coming down. Your husband will wave his hand towards the ether and pour himself a drink.

Vine

He had seen the wall from miles away, so large it was. What he hadn’t seen until his horse had drawn closer was a thin vine, running all the way to the top and over the wall, almost as though a rope had been placed there, inviting people to climb it.

He stood beneath it, now, and looked up. The wall was at least fifty meters high and there was no other way in. Of course there was another way in, he thought, but the front door didn’t offer any element of surprise. The only way to get in and out with what he was after was to climb. He tied his horse to a small tree that was surrounded by bushes and rendered the creature invisible but for the faint sound of breathing. He would be discovered if anyone were to come nearby, but from a distance he was safe. He patted him on the nose and the horse seemed to smile, though he knew it can’t have been so. He left him there, and walked to the vine, grabbing it and pulling himself up without a moment’s hesitation. If it was going to go wrong, it would go wrong whether he spent time assessing the situation or not.

The vine held his weight and showed no signs of giving in. Parts dropped from it and his hands were red and raw from the climb but still it held strong and still he climbed. Just past half way was a small ledge upon which he was able to rest for a moment. It stuck out from the wall as far as around the span of his hand, it was not a comfortable place to remain but it offered respite and a chance to catch his breath. He didn’t question its presence, simply a quirk of construction. He contemplated looking down, but chose not to.

Below, his horse was looking up.

He continued to climb after resting for not more than a minute. He was beginning to feel pain throughout his entire body but there was no more opportunity to stop. He would reach the top or he would fall down to the bottom, and he had no intention of the latter.

It wasn’t for ten minutes that he reached the top. A climb punctuated by constant stops as hanging motionless somehow felt like a break compared to pulling himself up, even though the strain on his arms was not much different. He finally was able to put one hand on the top of the wall and then pull himself up to place the other there too. He pulled himself up and when he could finally see what lay on the other side of the wall, he found not what he was looking for.

He could see straight down the other side, to what appeared to be a horse hiding in some bushes. He could see out for miles, to what appeared to be a wall, far in the distance. He could see back from where he’d come, and the wall that he’d overcome days before. He had further to go.

Puzzle

She ran through the doorway and turned around when she heard it lowering behind her. It was too late to go back and it hit the ground with a thud that rocked the ground. She kept her balance, but when she turned back in to the room she was no longer alone. She pulled the pistol from her pocket and fired two shots, which was all she needed to take down the two bears that she’d found herself in the company of.

She looked around. The room looked like all the other rooms in this place, only this one had no way out. Behind her the door of something resembling concrete that had come down now appeared invisible, as if a solid wall had fallen in front of it. She felt around the other walls in the room, tapping on them to find any points at which the construct may be weak, but she found nothing. All she did was disorient herself and she found that she was unable to say with any certainty which of the four sides she’d come in from.

A noise behind her! She turned, another bear, another shot, another dead bear. She ran over to where its body was dissolving through the floor and examined the wall behind it, but all she found was exactly as she’d found before – a solid wall. “Where are they coming from?” she said, and she walked over to the centre of the room.

There, she found a small indentation in the floor. There were no markings on it and it was set in to the floor itself, it was almost invisible, and could have just been a crack in the floor were it not for its unique shape. There was something familiar about it, the way three separate points converged to one central point, as if a triangle in mid-explosion. She put her hand in to her bag and pulled out a stone that she’d found in a chest some hours before; it was shaped just as the hole in the floor was shaped. She inserted it, and with a flash of light that made her feel dizzy, she suddenly found that there was an opening in the wall opposite her. Whether that was the way forwards or the way she had come from, she couldn’t know. Every room in this place was identical and she wouldn’t know whether she was going the right way until she ended up outside.

She approached the door wondering what had caused it to open. Was it possible that someone was monitoring her? She saw no signs of cameras in the room, or any vantage points of any kind, and yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong about it. She’d placed a stone item onto a floor of stone, and somehow a reaction had occurred. How? There was nothing conductive in stone, and the key was near weightless, if it was pressure activated why would the key even matter? She could have pressed it. Something wasn’t right here, and as she exited the room, she did so with caution.

Hatch

They were less than a ten meters away now, and he strode through the forest ahead of her, with sticks breaking beneath his feet with every step he took. He became aware, suddenly, that she was no longer following him. He turned around and she was standing still a few meters back.

“How much further?” she asked him.

“We’re basically there,” he said. “There’s like, ten more steps.”

She took him at his word and began to walk towards him. He turned and carried on towards it and she followed.

“What is it?” she asked when finally they were standing over it. There was a small clearing in the trees and ahead of them was a block of concrete around one foot high, and in the top of it was set a large manhole cover that was slightly ajar. “How did you even find it?” she asked, not waiting for the answer to the first question.

“I don’t know what it is,” he said. “That’s what we’re here to find out. I’m going in.”

“You can’t go in,” she said, scared, though she didn’t want him to know that.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, and actually winked. He tried to, anyway, but he’d never been able to and so he kind of squinted both eyes at her until she laughed, and he’d known that she would do.

“Just, I’m not going in,” she said.

“S’alright, just keep a lookout.”

“A lookout? What do you think you are, the army?” she said, laughing. He made a pose to try and look tough, and she laughed again.

“Okay,” he said in a deep voice that wasn’t his own. “I’m going in.” He tried to lift the manhole cover but was struggling when she climbed on to the block and helped him slide it to one side. They were faced with nothing but darkness.

“It’s dark,” she said. He pulled a torch from his bag and grinned at her. He shone the torch down the hole but still couldn’t see much.

“I can’t see anything,” he said. “I’ll have to get closer.”

“Closer? No, come on, let’s just go. You don’t even know where the bottom is.”

“Or if there even is a bottom.”

“Stop messing around,” she said. He had stopped listening, though, and was digging around in his bag again. After a few seconds, he pulled out a rope.

“A rope?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said in a sarcastic tone.

“I know it’s a rope, I meant what’s it for.”

“I tie one end around that tree,” he said, pointing to a tree, “and the other end around me. That way I can get out. Unless you want to hold the other end.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Come on,” he said, “it’ll be romantic.”

She rolled her eyes again.

“It’s alright,” he said, “I wouldn’t trust you with it anyway.”

She hit him playfully and said “I wouldn’t want to.”

When he’d tied the rope and reassured her that he was going through with this, he began his descent, wondering just where the bottom was. Or if there was one.

Postcard

“Where did you say she’d gone, again?” he shouted from the kitchen.

“Spain,” she shouted back from the hallway.

“And why is she sending us a postcard?” he shouted from the kitchen.

“There’s no need to shout, Mike, I’m right behind you.”

“Sorry, I thought you were- never mind. Why’s she sending us a postcard?”

“I don’t know, she’s probably sent everyone one.”

“Everyone… in town?”

“You know what I mean, she’s our neighbour, why not?”

“Okay. Is she having a nice time?” he asked, even though he didn’t really care whether or not she was having a nice time.

“You don’t really care whether or not she’s having a nice time,” his wife astutely replied. “You’ve not spoken two words with her since we got here.”

It was true. He’d never really been the type for socialising and Maude from next door was the type to holiday in Spain. She’d come back tanned, with a suitcase full of clothes that were too bright and a mouth full of stories he couldn’t care less about. “She’s not going to have a slideshow, is she?” he said, suddenly.

“What?”

“Nothing, sorry, what were you saying?”

“You don’t care whether she’s having a nice time.”

“Now, come on, that’s not true.”

“Yes it is.”

“Okay, it is, but I’d still like to take an interest. What’s she been up to?” he asked, his eyes wide to show that he truly did care. Her eyes tightened and her brow furrowed because she knew he didn’t care. “Okay, never mind,” he said.

“She’s been clubbing.”

“Who?”

“Maude.”

“No, I meant who’s she been clubbing?”

“Oh, ha, ha.”

He smiled because he knew she’d found it funny really, and she tried her best not to smile. “Isn’t she a bit old for clubbing?” he asked.

“She’s only 52.”

“My question still stands. I reckon we’re too old for clubbing and she’s got a few years on us.”

“If she wants to go clubbing, good for her, I say.”

“What if she wants to go clubbing and then tell us about it?”

“Well, she has.”

“Good for her?”

“Do you want to just read it?”

“Is it… dodgy?”

“What on Earth do you mean, ‘dodgy’?”

“You know, like, what kinds of clubs has she been to?”

“Normal ones! Nightclubs like we’ve got in town.”

“Why’s she gone to Spain for that? She could have gone to town.”

“The weather, I suppose.”

“Is it nice?”

“I don’t know, she doesn’t say. We could check the internet.”

“Let’s not. She doesn’t say?”

“She says she wishes we were there.”

“Everyone says that.”

“Maybe she really wishes it.”

“I hope not.”

“Can’t we go to Spain?”

“Clubbing?”

“Anything.”

“Of course we can.”

She smiled.

“Just not with Maude,” he said.

“I don’t know what you’ve got against her. She’s lovely if you get to know her.”

“She’s just a bit much, is all.”

“Well, she can be a bit. Did I tell you about George?”

“Who?”

“She’s gone to Spain with him.”

“Please, tell me about George.”