Winter writing competition

This is why I left (that is me excusing my rubbish story below) . But I felt like posting this in here. Sorry it is so crap, I will be leaving again after this so don't worry.

They all look shocked.

Good, it will give me the advantage. The alarm has not been turned on yet so only the sound of the front glass doors shattering when I kicked them in is bouncing off the walls.

“SIR! We are closed and I have to inform you that the police are on their way. Please leave now”

I kick the suit in the groin as soon as he is in range – I do it properly, knee up to waist height first then snap the leg out strait and hard. He collapses and I step out of the little halo of broken glass on the floor and walk over him. As a flourish I pause and snap the heel of my clunky boots down into his mouth. I am rewarded with a sound like crisp white snow that crunches beneath your feet and a little scream.

Nice touch.

Everyone is running for the back room and trying to get behind the counter.

They slam the door behind them and cower on the other side of the thick glass.

My leg hurts from kicking in the doors and downing the suit, far too old for all this anger. I don’t limp as I walk up to the glass.

I certainly don’t blink. I am looking directly at another suit – they are wide eyed and look like this day will not be listed in their “Fridays I remember with a warm fuzzy glow”

I clasp the card in my hand and strait arm it through the glass, blood – my blood – sprays with the glass and a sharp invigorating pain shoots up my arm and I feel some knuckles break.

Some more screams, good – I have them totally focused.

I clear my throat and in my best growling Dark Night voice I calmly enquire:

“Why have you bastards stopped my card?”

“We, I can’t …what do you WANT!”

“You fuckers are messing with me and my future. This needs to go smoothly.”

“What needs to go smoothly?”

“YOU KNOW WHAT! My place. My safe place for Sarah and me. You will NOT get in the way of that. No one will!”

A hand on my shoulder shakes me. Not now! I turn ready to hurt someone. The ceiling is dark, the light slides in through the curtains, and her face looks at me concerned. I hate to see that look. A face so beautiful should never have to wear an expression like that.

“Nick!, Nick wake up! You were growling and swearing. You woke us up, are you ok?”

“Oh. Sorry. Bad dream.”

“This is the plan.  We get Velvet Underground bass lines.  We distort them to shit so nobody can tell.  We place a melody on top.  Simple.”

Harry leaned back on his chair looking smug.  In an act of contrived finality he reached into his tight fitting jeans to rescue the suffocating pack of Marlboros.  After tugging them free, he failed to release one by flicking the bottom of the pack and resigned himself to the plebeian task of trying to grip one between his finger and thumb.  The others watched in silence before Dopeman said something.

“I suppose it’s wha’ every ova band does though, righ’?”  He looked around for approval.  “I mean, The Beatles were just copying, you know, whoever they wanted.  I mean, ‘ho’s gonna question tha facking Beatles?  No one.  Which is ‘ow they go’ a way wiv it.”

Harry looked at The Dopeman while the others considered the wisdom of this revelation.  He knew the Dopeman wasn’t a cockney.  He was like him, middle class, educated and self-assured.  He also didn’t mind that he put on a cockney accent.  Harry himself pretended he was cockney half the time too.  That’s why he always left the room when his parents called.  He spoke posh to his parents, of course he did.  He didn’t want to piss them off.

“There’s gotta be only so many actual bass lines in the world anyway right?”

He listened a bit more, allowing them to reach the inevitable conclusion.  When he felt comfortable enough he leant forward again.

“We’ll call this song…” he glanced out the window “Winter.  George, get on the key board and play that bass line you know.  The one from Heroin.  Dopeman, get on the drum machine.  Do the same loop you had for Battery Sponsored Suicide.  We’ll work it out from there.”

The Dopeman and George got up.

“What shall I do then?”

Harry looked at Al.  He knew he called himself Al as anyone could tell you that Albert was way too posh for an electro-grime band.  He even wore a New Era cap for god’s sake.

“Can you actually play an instrument?”

“No.  But that doesn’t matter.  Does Bono play an instrument?”

“Please don’t bring Bono into this.  What do you do?”

“Er, I can, like, do poetry ‘n’ shit.  Rhymes ‘n’ lyrics, innit.”

Harry sighed.

“Really.”

“Yeah yeah,” Al suddenly became enthused when Harry didn’t laugh at him immediately “listen, I got bare rhymes.  Um…” he looked out the window and awkwardly cleared his throat.

“I look outside, into the street… um

The snow comes down… um

Crisp white snow that crunches beneath your feet…” he stammered.

“Woah.”

Harry looked over at dumbstruck George and Dopeman.

“That was awesome.  Do that again.” 

Al grinned and began to energetically recite the things he saw around him, devoid of any rhythm or diction, his face reddening with excitement.

Harry pinched the top of his nose and frowned.  I went to college for this, he thought.

If my life were a brand, today I’d opt for Marks & Spencer. Panning out from the glacial reality of this winter’s morning, the ad break would kick in and the dulcet tones of Dervla Kirwin coo sensuously:

“This is not just sympathy. This is the cooling essence of a soothing balm, hand-crafted by a dozen devoted skin therapists; the restorative power of a thousand richly scented, candlelit bubble baths; the endorphin rush of a million melting-middle chocolate puddings... all culminating in one lllllong, ecsssstatic, shudddddering orrrrrrrrrrrrrrgasm of symmmmmmpathyyyy!”

This sympathy, however, is more credit-crunch RBS than M&S. This is a blistering, blackening, devil-red molten lava flow of sympathy: torrid, unstoppable, searing me with shame as it crackles its slow, deliberate, relentless path over my guilty body.

Nobody would buy this.

And yet, it didn’t start off this way. Like all addictions, the first shot merely stimulated and comforted. Nothing overpowering; nothing indicated how strongly I was to come to crave this, need it, feel miserable without it (ironic, really, as I had to be miserable in order to get it) – no. This was simply satisfying... and slightly naughty.

Harmless, really. A one-off.

Because obviously, life would get more interesting than this. I wouldn’t normally have to resort to these kinds of manoeuvres in order to be noticed; in order to feel as though I were participating in this pantomime of life that sang and danced so joyously around me; in order to have something to bloody well say.

Rachael always had things to say.

“Karen, I need those figures by the end of the week. Just a weeee reminder!”

“If you don’t think you can cope with your workload, Karen, let me know. I’m just a leeeettle concerned.”

“No-one’s suggesting you can’t do your job, Karen. But if we don’t get those reports in today, soooome-one’s going to have to explain why. Can you explain why, Karen? Can you?”

Course I bloody well could. But I wasn’t about to. Which is when the sympathy card suddenly seemed like the obvious, genius ace in the pack.

It was so easy. A family crisis here, a health problem there, and all required explanations just melt away. The crying was particularly effortless – oh, the blissful release of tears flooding from the loneliness and the emptiness and the utter pointlessness of everything. The crying that everyone believed had some legitimate, concrete, normal reason. Something they could relate to. Something interesting.

But now I’m here, on this freezing cold morning, shuffling around outside the church, watching everyone arrive, gossip, ponder, wait, shiver, stomp around on that crisp white snow that crunches beneath your feet, shiver, wait, ponder, gossip... and, finally, start to stare, as they wonder, when exactly is my mother’s funeral going to start?

The thing about being a compulsive liar is that you always manage to convince yourself that some miracle will save you from revealing the truth.

Beneath the rapidly cooling lava flow of sympathy, I pray for a volcanic eruption.