独家优惠奖金 100% 高达 1 BTC + 180 免费旋转

Rosie

I peer around the door, Pru is sitting in a worn, desk chair, trying to brush the life back into her thick, greasy hair. The baby is lying on the concrete floor sucking peacefully on a dummy of sorts. I’m in the mood for a chat.

“He’s coming,” she says, looking up from the touchphone she somehow manages to keep in operation. “Hurry,” she presses me, waving me to come in, turning off the kerosene lamp and plunging herself and Baby behind the chair, “get that blanket there ready or find a place to hide.”

“Who’s coming?” I ask, trying not to be influenced by her sudden anxiety.

“It’s Jase,” she whispers, “please stay with me.”

Jase? Shit. I am one of numerous women he has preyed on. Better known by his nickname, “Sixer”, he’s a nutter, six feet six tall and lines his pockets by pushing six-inch screws into his huge nostrils while standing on occupied tables in reputable eateries, laughingly terrifies the tightest patrons into shoving their cash at him. He’s violent, dangerous and void of a conscience, it isn’t only me that draws the correlation between Sixer and the number of The Beast.

I creep back into the hallway, thinking fast, and blow out the candles, trying not to make too much sound as my feet crunch over the debris. Some of the junkies here are terrified of their own shadows, but Pru isn’t one of them, she’s clean and sane. I consider going back to my room but there’ll be no time now and I should definitely help to protect Pru and her little one, alone and vulnerable here in the farthest reaches of the building.

I go back into her room, she starts as I enter. I try to look confident and calm, while not understanding the nature of her contact with Jase, experience has taught me to know when to save questions for later. I look for a place to hide, there’s nothing but a small chest.

“Do you want to put Baby in there?” I suggest, testing it, pulling out the middle shelf to create space.

“No!” She shudders visibly at the thought of separation.

I try to pull the door to, but it sticks halfway.

“Leave it,” Pru urges, as the baby starts to fret, picking up on the tension in her mother.

We have nothing to our advantage, there are no windows or exits anywhere close by, we’re at the end of a dark, narrow basement. I feel at my favourite flick-knife in my inner pocket, she has all the colours of the rainbow on her steely blade, transfer her to the inside of my sleeve-cuff. Then I shake out the neatly pressed and folded blanket from the Salvation Army, its flowery-scented detergent absurd in this musty place, its mottled colours settle over us. Pru pulls it across to cover Baby completely, holding it up so that it doesn’t smother her. I hang on to my end, try to tuck it around me. We huddle closer together in the corner, I wrap my left arm around Pru’s right knee and squeeze hard, wanting to close down the space as well as provide some reassurance. It feels like an appropriate thing to do, even though we barely know each other, we’ve just been making friends these last three weeks since she appeared here. I helped Gregor persuade the lads to let her stay, it’s so good to have another girl around again.

Heavy footfalls grind along the corridor, my heartbeat thunders in my ears, Pru pulls Baby in close and I squeeze her leg harder, trying to remind her to keep still. We seem pathetically reduced to child-like cowardice, I think as I recall hiding in cupboards from my father this way, reminding myself I have more power now. I caress Rosie, she has a white rose engraved on her hilt, my thumb follows it up to the front quillion. The door creaks and swings fully open. Is he looking at us? Does he see us? Can he hear our breathing? Should I step out in front so that Pru can protect Baby? Would I sacrifice myself for them? I still have so many dreams…

The tip of the blanket is raised, we have been discovered, of course we have. I leap up, shaking Rosie free and brandishing her in front of me, her blade is only three inches, but it’s enough. As Sixer drunkenly makes a grab at Rosie she penetrates the palm of his hand, in and out, so smooth, so easy. He’s yelping and crying like a baby, but it won’t be long before that turns to rage.

“Run!” I hiss at Pru, who is still peeking from the blanket and she does so, clutching Baby to her. I am bringing up the rear. Only a novice to this life could have created such a remote and defenceless situation.

We reach the top of the stairs where Adrian and Alex are coming in through a broken window we use as a back entrance, they’re young, uncorrupted, misplaced here. Close behind are Stuart, a former nurse, who’ll steal anything from anyone including his own, and his brother Mad Marvin, who carries a loaded gun. Pru runs towards them all, a stream of incoherent babble falling from her lips and sweet, blond Alex begins to calm her. I take the opportunity to disassociate myself, duck outside and keep running. I mustn’t stop now.

There are numerous people living in different parts of this squat, a vast, disused bus depot. I share with Danny, with the pet owl, and his dog, Brandy, and Speedy Gregor, who is little more than my age, somewhat schizo and drastically underweight from all the amphetamines he takes to overcome his nerves and supress his hunger.

Howie, the heroin addict, is on the same floor as us with Baldy Brian, who keeps telling stories of ghosts he sees here, but he’s always stoned on lighter fluid. Howie always used to look normal but lately appears dangerously drawn. I hadn’t realised why until one night when I was in Howie’s room for a smoke with Gregor, who brought me here, we’ve known each other a few years. This is our third squat together, with gaps between when he’s been off travelling, but I know quite a number of the other lads here too, we’re all on the same circuit so to speak. In our town the homeless are formed into a number of cliques, changing only by deaths, (generally by grotesque accident, overdose or suicide) and those with itchy feet or sufficiently on the wrong side of some person or else the law to prefer to keep moving about the country, and the reliably constant influx of new, lost teenagers.

Without so much as asking if we minded, Howie had pulled the belt out of his trousers, and I was able to see, as he lifted his shirt, that they were way too large for him, or rather he had become too thin for them. Before I could wonder any farther, fearing that he was undressing, he had wrapped the belt around his arm, just in front of his elbow, and pushed a needle into his paper-white skin, I saw all the red scratches there on his arm. How naïve of me to have thought that Howie wouldn’t succumb to what the others were doing, just because he has a day job on the market. He fell back onto the yellowy mattress and lay passed out across me with a weird smile on his face.

Gregor had pulled me free. He comes from a family with six children up north and having had younger sisters makes him big-brotherly around the young girls. Gregor is totally anti hard-drugs, always warning the latest impressionable youngsters against them with horror stories of what he’s seen.

I pass the old gutted buses in the main forecourt, there were some cats nesting and breeding in one of them last spring. They were doing all right, some of them looked old, but they were affectionate, their hair stood up stiffly and they moulted excessively, skeletal figures, but others were still young and feisty. A bunch of us named them all individually and fed and cared for them, nursed them into good health, they brought out the best in us. Sixer massacred the lot of them when he came, to make a point I guess.

Danny is staggering up the main road, he wants to take Brandy out for her late walk, but his legs aren’t what they used to be, even though he can’t be much more than fifty, he has been up and down the country on those same pins for decades, rain or shine.

“Why don’t you go back in Dan?” I offer, stroking Brandy under her chin as she greets me waggily. I shake my coat pocket so he can hear a load of loose change rattle, it’s from my dole money. Danny can’t sign on anymore but he gets baccy, cider and other things by alternative means, which he shares with me.

“I’ll go to the chippie,” I wink with promise, Danny is a good guy. His brown eyes light up and he hands me Brandy’s rope. I pat my thigh so that she follows me.

I let her go in the city park, take a gentle stroll to recover my composure after the panic. The anger, the hurt, it can overwhelm me if it gets the space to claw its way back. Darkness is falling, I hear the sound of explosions and look over a decorative wall to see three large fireballs rise and fill the sky. It must be Guy Fawkes, is it that late in the year already? I never know these days. As I take a bench to admire the colours, an older couple gets up to leave with an unsubtle “Tsk”. Am I so obnoxious a vagrant? Too scraggy to be near? I am learning not to take it personally.

I relax into the atmosphere of the late autumn evening, make myself a roll-up and ask a group of youngsters along the wall for a light. Clusters of burning fagots are thrust rudely up towards my face, close enough to burn. There is no place to put my hand on one because they’re flaming from top to near bottom. Being homeless elicits these sorts of reactions, there’s no way to conceal my shabbiness and I know I’m far from fragrant. What I wouldn’t give for a shower and some fresh, properly fitting clothes. I feel so dirty and humiliated among all the students and hipsters.

The cigarette is between my lips but I daren’t put my face close, they’re laughing and there’s no telling what they might do, ignorance can make people cruel. I lower my eyes, put it back in my pocket for later, hope it won’t fall apart. Brandy comes to me, alarmed by all the gunpowder cracks and bangs. I loop the rope over her neck and she instantly pulls us away. I excuse myself as though it can’t be helped, but I’m grateful to go. Brandy is scared, pulling harder and faster, her nervous disposition and her wiry body betray something of a sight hound, though her colours and ears look Alsatian. She is strong and fast and we stumble down the broad stone steps to the main street. We’ll pass Finn’s, he loves dogs, he always gives me a special deal, I’ll get chips for Danny, Gregor and me and fish for Brandy.

As we turn the corner, Brandy wraps her rope lead around a wide pillar and I am attempting to untangle her when Sixer accosts me. There is a predictable limit to the places we go outside of the summer weeks. He is already poking at me, pulling at the material of my coat, jabbing tauntingly at my ribs and stomach with a broken bottle. His left hand, tightly bandaged in an old sock, takes a firm hold of my only free arm, I push back at him with my knees shouting, “Get lost you shit!”

He looks like a good boy with his springy, brown curls, so long as your gaze doesn’t meet with those soulless eyes, apparently he emptied his shame on his own flesh and blood before he came to our town. But he is gripping me painfully and if I let go of Brandy’s lead I will lose her, she’s mad with panic. Sixer is just a lad but I am barely a woman and not nearly as tall as he is. I feel the fear threatening to freeze me, I think this time he will kill me before he’s done. Despairingly I consider letting Brandy go, then in a jiffy I become aware that Sixer’s hold on my right wrist has loosened, his wound must be hurting him. As the fear momentarily releases me with him, in a burst of clarity I recall Gregor’s advice when he first admired Rosie, “In every situation decide: The throat or the foot. Kill or immobilise.” It seemed so dramatic at the time.

With furious determination I wrench my wrist free and shake Rosie out. I won’t be a killer. Dropping to the ground I drive her full force and mercilessly through his boot. Sixer lands on his rump, his screams are drawing attention too late, this time she is harder to retract, but I need her with me, I stamp my trainer down on his ankle to free her.

I run around the pillar to release poor, snarling Brandy, glad that she was protected there from Sixer’s malevolence, and allow her once again to drag me away.

Police sirens approach and we crouch breathless in the porch of a lighted house nearby to hide and see if Sixer might follow, but he’s being taken by the Fuzz. He’s done time before, they’ve got the measure of him and they won’t let him back out tonight.

Back at the bus station I feel my legs start to tremble and give way as, exposed, I take the last steps across the open interior in the moonlight, through the smell of urine and excrement, to our room at the far end of the first floor.

Gregor is on his mattress on the left, snivelling, Danny’s mattress is on the right, where he sits tending to Olly, on his shoulder. Brandy collapses on my bed at the back, by the filing cabinet. I step over the candle, burning in the centre of the floor in an old milk bottle, and give her her fish straight away, which she relishes. My mattress was nicked, but I have two sleeping bags on top of each other.

“What’s up with Gregor?” I whisper to Danny, as I hand him his portion of chips.

“Howie’s dead,” Danny sighs, looking me up and down, taking in my ripped coat and bloodied hands. “Marvin made him and Brian carry him out to the ditches, we couldn’t have Old Bill in here.”

I feel like the strain of this lifestyle is aging me by a year a week. “Such a gentle soul,” I reflect.

We all saw it coming, it was like a slow suicide, there couldn’t have been another outcome. Most of us have pathetic stories to tell, nothing to live for, no families, no expectations. All of us are running or hiding, even if we don’t know it yet, from people, from hurts, responsibilities, even ourselves, and it is the simple pleasures we find where we can that brighten our days, ease the pain, but maybe the rich people with flats and hot showers feel that as well.

“I have to leave in the morning,” I announce.

“What happened?” Danny asks, shakily pouring some cider into an old polystyrene cup for me.

I sit down beside Gregor and he takes his chips, visibly picking up, but looking at me with concern.

“Sixer,” Gregor tells him simply on my behalf, “he was out for her blood this afternoon.”

News always travels fast around the squat and I know they will have been filled in on Sixer’s visit to Pru earlier.

“Where’s Pru now?” I ask.

“She’s in with Eastbourne-John and Stuart,” Gregor says.

John is a plump, geeky travelling-type and Stuart is another heroin junkie, a stinking hippie with toenails too long for proper shoes even if he could lay his hands on some, but wouldn’t harm a flea; I’d say he’s not far behind Howie. I know John will make himself responsible for the well-being of Pru and her baby, he’s that type, even if it drives her to distraction. She needs to learn to trust someone, in this environment it’s not safe to be a loner.

“I’ll leave first thing,” I say, “I won’t bother with goodbyes,” it’s not done here, people come and go all the time for their own reasons, no questions asked.

“Where will you head?” Gregor asks, “Bristol, Clacton, Liverpool?” Gregor knows people in many places.

I haven’t a thought.

Gregor sees it, “Go to Liverpool,” he advises, “Eddie’s there just now, he’ll watch out for you.”

Gregor and I shared a room in a London factory with Eddie before, a Caribbean fella in his forties, likes a reefa but totally sober and decent.

“You come back as soon as the dust settles,” Danny urges, “till then keep Brandy, she’s better off with you.”

I thank him profusely but he is already nodding off, drunk.

I look at Gregor, “Do you think he means that?” I ask hopefully.

Gregor nods, “Be careful Squirt, okay?” He turns around to face the wall. I know he is suffering, doesn’t want me to see.

Tears of relief well in my eyes, mixed with sadness and exhaustion, at least I won’t be alone. I pat Gregor on the knee, I know what people mean when they say someone is like a brother to them, and wander over to my dog, Brandy is already in dream world and I collapse alongside her. We have quite some days of long walks ahead of us.

Add a comment

What is your view?

Send

Related posts:

Great Gatsby Festival returns to South Lake Tahoe this weekend

The venue will host the 35th annual Great Gatsby Festival, Saturday through Sunday, Aug. 10–11. The festival is an all-out celebration of 1920s life — a perfect event for the historic grounds at…

Making Better User Experience for Mobile Games with NFTs

This article will explain what is a Non-Fungible Token, why it is crucial for blockchain-based games, and how to make the user experience of NFT-based games better. In November 2017, a DApp game…

DeFi Borrowing market overview

As this domain is really new, I will do my best to make it easy to understand and also provide you the resources to do your own research. The total borrowing value outstanding in DeFi is now over…