Speeders

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Sam: Over The Threshold

I managed to hide the tears until the funny old man and his grandson had left me, but when I got inside the flat, they burst out. Holding them in just seemed to make them bigger and louder and for a few moments all I could do was stand there, leaning against the cheap plywood door, clutching the stupid bloody standard lamp, taking in huge sobbing gasps of air like a two year old having a tantrum. I had thought that naming the rabbit after Si would take away the power his name had over me, but there was something about the old man’s words, however rude, that brought it all crashing back. Not a virgin? He’d said. Like I had wasted my life, thrown away something precious on Simon the Shagger.

And now here I was in this, this place. And he was gone. The bastard. The shagger.

Calm. Keep calm. I had to hold it together for my lovely boy. I pulled the sleeves of my hoodie up over my wrists and used the crinkly fabric to wipe my eyes dry and look around me. The flat was even worse than I’d imagined. Patches of frayed carpet clung to the concrete floor – in places it had worn away completely leaving black and rotting bits of underlay behind. The windows were silted up with ages worth of dust, a streak of green slime running down one of them. In the corner of the room it looked like someone had once made a fire with an old television set. And everywhere there was a strange, dank smell. Foul and earthy, not the sort of smell you’d expect at the top of a tower block, in the middle of a city.

But the strangest thing of all was the ceiling. It curved and bowed almost cartoonishly, as if there was a big lake of water on the floor above, about to burst through. In the centre of the room, a sad little pink lampshade hung like an outie belly-button, wires all exposed. Just then, another one of those huge rumbles came, shaking the cruddy floor underneath me. It felt closer now – I prayed to god that noise wasn’t coming from the boiler.

I couldn’t let myself think about it, or the sobs would come back. Instead I groped in my hoodie pocket for the reassuring square of my phone, my anchor to the world. I didn’t need to dial, the number for the housing authority was programmed into my phone’s memory now.

“Hello? Yes, my name’s Sam Hedley. No I can’t hold…” I sighed and waited for the familiar strains of Kenny G to fade, and the receptionist came back on the phone. “Yes that’s right, I was rehoused today. But you promised me the third floor, and switched it to the 18th at the last minute – and there’s something wrong with it.
“Well there’s this smell, and the ceiling’s funny. We can’t stay here.
“What do you mean nowhere else? I know it’s a Friday but… But this place…” No good, the tears were coming back, and a soon as the first sob gargled out of my throat I knew I’d lost the argument. The same old routine would start again – calling the council, sitting on hold, begging to be rehoused. Alex and I were stuck here.

This is all your fault, Si.

I pulled the kettle out from my bag and made my way through to the dilapidated remains of the kitchen, grinding my teeth together as I remembered the words of the housing officer – I suppose he thought it was a funny joke, that it would lighten the mood. “The 18th floor, eh? Ooh, welcome to the mile high club!”

The kid on the stairs

Twenty five legs of lamb. We'd seen the last of Ixbal’s Inca-passity Benny-fit for that month. I stole the trolley from the Land of Ice, too – there was no other way to get them back across the moat of steel in time. The guardians pursued me across the tarmac, but I was too quick for them, even in this heavy form. I flipped them the finger as I dragged my load into the underpass – they did not dare follow me in case I had friends with knives.

The trolley wheels froze when I took them out of the car park, and every step I took, every bump of the trolley’s static wheels on the stairs, I cursed this strange, stupid world. Why just the lamb's legs? What is wrong with the rest of the animal? Why did the castle's lifting boxes never work? Why couldn't I just fly? My eyes were wet suddenly and my breath came in big gulps. This is not where we belong. This is not where we belong. Mother of a motherless son, this is not where we belong.

A pair of arms blocked me as I struggled past the twelfth floor. A kid, his blue-rimmed eyes narrowed, staring at me. Gold chains weighed down his pudgy neck, each knuckle bore a flash of yellow metal. He looked a little older than the body I wore, one of those children who look fat, but who are actually all muscle, like a bull, like prime beef cattle. If only Herlut took boys, I thought. This child would be the perfect feast for him, even though he’d be picking jewellery out of his teeth for weeks after.

He looked me up and down, faintly wrinkling his nose.

“Is this the best that Edith Cavell House has to offer?” he asked, using that voice which bullies use when the aren’t really talking to you, just talking for your benefit. Unlike the rest of us, bullies are allowed to talk to themselves. Ixbal does it all the time. “This is going to be easier than I thought.”

For a couple of moments, we stared at each other. I know what he saw – a skinny nine year old boy with a bad haircut, clinging to a trolley full of frozen meat. I had big wide brown eyes, with a bruise under the left one where Ixbal had flipped an elastic band at me three days before. I have seen this face in the mirror many times. No matter how hard I try to look fierce and proud, the way I truly am, it always looks like it’s about to burst into tears.

But for once, this face, this useless body would be an advantage for me. He saw a victim, someone he could thump easily. Bullies who look upon a skinny boy do not see a heart of venom beating beneath. Deep inside me the part of me that he could not see bubbled up with glee.

He stared at me, then looked down at his hands as he balled them into fists, and smiled a slow, ugly smile. I would have liked to toy with him longer, to take out the frustrations of the last few years upon him, but I did not have time for this. I grabbed one of the legs of lamb, cold between my boy’s fingers, and rammed it hard into his face. It made a wonderful crunchy sound – the kid didn’t even have time to register surprise in his eyes before he crumpled to the floor.

I laughed a short, flat laugh, before hauling the trolley onwards. These people. They think they are so ruthless and so clever, with their muggings and their druggings, but they would not survive a day in the place where we belong.