Tracks

It seemed as though it was just another typical day when his disruptive buzzer forced his eyes open. There was the faint repetition of rain drops tapping at his window, and that strangely comforting chill that England so often offered gratefully stroked his face. The carpet felt tauntingly soft between his toes which made the transfer to the chilling tiles of the bathroom even more brutal. Early morning cheeriness was never his strong point. The warm embrace of an awakening shower always perked up his senses and prepared him for the day ahead. The tingling of his Colgate mouthwash helped clear his hoarse throat and gargled over his lips like a low budget Vesuvius. Button by button the morning rush dissolved like a Berroca, and the sound of his front door locking behind him had finally came. The latching of the lock beneath the plastic of his door frame always sounded so definitive.

Despite the light drizzle, the day was actually quite pleasant in comparison to the usual. Here could hear the echoes of children fighting their school-day preparations omitting from behind the walls of every other house. The even louder sound of older siblings squabbling over who got the last morsel of Coco-Pops from the bottom of the box was taking centre-stage today though. His umbrella was up and his navy mack was buttoned from top to bottom in an effort to protect his favourite plum coloured tie from a serious drenching. From the corner of his eye he spotted a slight glimmer. He looked down to discover a new-born looking pound coin at his feet gazing up at him attractively; It was almost like Elizabeth was flirting with him. He thought of that little coin moving from pocket to pocket throughout its lifetime on a journey that nobody would ever know. He also thought of the Kinder Bueno he could now buy on his lunch break.

His usual fifteen minute walk to the local train station had taken less time than usual. This was good news as it meant he had time to stop and withdraw some cash from the ATM for whatever post-work activities his colleagues might have planned. Friday "staffies" always tended to ensure the day ended slightly dizzier than the other weekdays, as if the prospect of a coming weekend wasn't intoxicating enough. He turned away from the panting cash machine and ambled contently through to Platform 3. The electronic turnstile swallowed his ticket greedily and he forced his way through the flailing metal arms. An angelic voice filled the air and informed him his train was slightly delayed and there would be a fifteen minute wait. He did not care though. He was enjoying the calmness before the storm of his nine to five.

His watch politely bleeped to inform him that it was half past eight (the time his train usually greeted him.) He took that and the shiny new pound coin in his pocket as proof that it wasn't just a typical day after all. As he turned the corner he saw a flash of red and white from across the tracks. It happened so quietly to the masses that had congregated around him but may as well have instantly deafened him where he stood. It was almost as though clocks had stopped and the murmuring conversations surrounding him paused as everything sank in. Realisation shuddered through his body. It was significantly more aggressive and prominent than the shudder that tickled his eyelids open earlier that morning. The first thing he saw was the direct Manchester Oxford Street train hurtling through the station with no intention of stopping. The second thing he saw was the red raincoat of the little blonde girl that had accidentally tumbled from the edge of the platform into its wake.

There was faint rustling as his hand crafted fabric ruck sack hit the floor. He blinked rapidly. Everything around him had fallen silent, including the despairing screams of a brunette woman placed directly above the stiffened and terrified little girl sat motionless on the tracks. Before he knew it he was mid-air, jumping from the concrete. The soles of his shoes hit the iron railway with so much force that it felt as though his spine was belly dancing. He had never moved so quickly and instinctively. He flung his arms around the little red raincoat and forcefully threw her tiny frame back onto Platform 2 into the arms of the shrieking brunette. She felt so light that he may as well have been throwing a doll. The entire station was filled with a high pitched screeching which cleared his temporary deafness. Shouting, moaning, crying and hollering flooded his ears like a Tsunami. The metallic frame of the Oxford Street Train was practically kissing his cheek, and the quaking ground beneath him was effectively rocking him to sleep. It had all happened so quickly yet he afforded himself one second to look to his left. It was then that he saw a small hand outstretched in his direction.

Her shaking hand fell back to her side and she sank, shocked, into the chest of her grateful mother. Her tiny face was suddenly covered by chocolate coloured silk and the sweet smell of perfume filled her nostrils. She had to look down at the floor as the terrifying blur and noise of her surroundings was too intimidating for her to cope with. At her feet sat her mother's favourite leapord print handbag, the contents scattered across the floor. The only thing she could focus on though was the shiny surface of a single pound coin that had rolled out and nestled itself next to a cigarette butt near the edge of the platform. It was almost as though it was awaiting a train just like most had planned to that day.

Upon the Hill

The sweetest disposition set free at the hands of poor judgement,

Sat upon a hill of past tense,

Winding thumbs as if to power a car engine,

Dragging heels through black sand and harsh sun.

Like the remains of our disheveled church,

All internal fibre twisted and wrenched,

Two steps backwards with eyes to the sky,

The simplicity of Jenga and the sweetness of a marshmallow.

Another rainy day in Liverpool,

A muse and inspiration washed out by each drop,

Take me back to my beach,

Nobody baby, but you and me.

Lobsters fighting claw to claw,

Unable to find peace amongst the rubble of a dirty tank,

Both hand picked and brought to boil,

If only things could have been different.

Fluttering eyelashes of an illegal blonde,

Crying out to feel that breeze once more,

All mistakes put down to an unfortunate circumstance,

Stood silently in a distorted glass cage.

Lets go round again,

Ding ding, first round knockout,

We're all entitled to a rematch,

That undisputed title worth the stars and more.

The tickle of a love fooled vinyl record,

Playing a song without falter,

Out-dated and derelict,

Trends are temporary but class is permanent.

Still sat unnervingly upon the hill,

Blissfully unaware the gates have been locked for a while,

Bolted shut with no keys present,

Pliers at the ready and get to work.

A cure to the disease,

It's been in circulation for what feels like years,

Left swept under the carpet,

At the hands of a stubborn brush.

A moment to grasp at floating debris,

A love as elusive as a bird in the hand,

A dream laced with ignorant hopelessness, 

A laugh sent to dance just for old times sake.

Homage to a Comedian

“Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate: only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers, don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty! You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure! Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world . . .”

Charlie Chaplin - 'The Great Dictator' 1940 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK2WJd5bXFg

Ode to the Blackboard

Caught off guard by another liquorice love lock,

Nothing short of an acquired taste.

Country girls and sewer rats,

Whirling through a moonlit waltz.

Whose neck is that above that line,

Wondering if it will snow this winter?

She's getting creepily closer,

An eclipsing eyelash told me so.

Secrets whispered into my ear by a viper's tongue,

A fork in the road long overdue,

Flying up behind me with a neon shadow.

Subtle Suzie setting the scene,

Somebody lend the girl a pill.

Pupils quickly escaping the classroom,

Desperate to breathe chalk dust from the blackboard.

Back and forth on a merry-go-round,

Shimmering cheek bones just a distraction.

Eyes to the floor,

Shoelaces knotted together,

It was always intended to end with a trip.

Vulgar stars rattled by a forceful sun,

Suit up and tie on,

Power up and pretend...

...stick to the fucking script please...

The Peppermint Chew

I peel off the wrapper in a crowded room,
An insignificant act to most,
My steaming breath glazing the window,
Laced with a thousand vices.

They tend to tell me secrets I'm aware of,

I always lie and say I didn't know,

They never really stimulate my conscious,

But I stick around for the quiet.

Suck it and see because you'll never know otherwise,

What could have happened if we took it too far,

We've made this mistake before,

Yet here we are waiting to regret it all over again.

I don't suppose you saw it did you?

Because I always tend to miss the point,

Faster than the speed of right or wrong,

So a little hand wouldn't go amiss.

Have you ever gotten lost in a house of mirrors?

Or smoked a cigarette on the promenade?

Listened to a one sided argument?

Put together a jigsaw wearing a blindfold?

Who's place is it to say what crazy is,

I've never really seen any difference,
I swallow down my peppermint chew,

Expecting it to solve rather than disguise.

Babylon Bungalow

Where are they from, 

Another Babylon bungalow,

Dreams sprinkled over their hot and sour soup,

Bitter sweet potential amongst particles of carbon.

Where is he now,

Surfing on a tablespoon through a cosmic tunnel of love,

Locking lips with his candy cane mistress,

Whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a shadow.

Where is she now,

Winding through the veins of an imaginary friend,

Sipping her gin from a copper cup,

Wondering where the dimmer switch is.

Where are they now,

Hand in hand talking through prosthetic plans, 

Holding one another through a stifling snow storm,

Stuck together trying to find the corners.

Who were they meant to be,

The jesters or the jury,

Sprouting wings from their shoulders,

All for that numb rush.

There Must Be Thorns

“Willie? Why do you never open your door for me Willie? All I want to do is chat.”

William loathed the sound of his mother’s voice. It was such a raspy, indelicate noise that only seemed to appear after her weekly rendezvous with an empathetic bottle of cheap brandy. William’s parents had never found interaction with their only son particularly necessary. They raised him until he could cope to some degree by himself then disconnected themselves completely from his life. In fact, he only had a vague recollection of what his father sounded like at all. He could list the number of conversations he remembered having with his father in his life time on half a hand, maybe even a quarter. The only tiny slither of their identity he was truly certain of was their names. Kevin and Susanne were such dull, uninteresting titles laced with a clear lack of personality, a lot like William for that matter. He remembered an old news story that was spread around his local town about an escaped murderer named Kevin; it raised suspicions for a while due to his fathers’ frequent absence from the family home that he made clear was for “work purposes.” These suspicions were completely scrapped once the murderer version of Kevin was found naked, face down in a pool of blood outside the local sweet shop covered in strawberry laces and liquorice allsorts. Who ate liquorice allsorts these days? Murderers obviously William answered himself.

William felt choked by his two syllables and blamed his parents for his lack of personal value, starting at his name and continuing through their pure inability to bring him into the world properly.

“Are you ever going to leave your room Willie? There’s a world out there you know, with beautiful women in it. You do like women don’t you Willie?”

Her slurred sentences always shot through William with an unerring precision. It was as though he was the target and Susanne’s liquid confidence was the arrow shooting accurately from the twisted bow that was her mouth. He ignored the reference to his sexuality because he was sure that he was not of the homosexual orientation. The ocean of magazines underneath his bed where proof of that. The spiteful manner in which her sand paper tongue spat out Willie was what got to him the most. He despised that nickname - a nickname tauntingly thrust upon him throughout his school years - and she was fully aware of that. It must have been a decade since he last responded to her drunken ramblings with anything other than silence. Whenever he spoke to her it gave him the exact same sensation of suffering a deep paper cut whilst licking envelopes. He never saw the point in engaging with the woman slumped against the outside of his bedroom door; the door that seemed to creak under the force of every bitter exclamation.

“How about finding yourself a girl hey Willie?”

This question if anything simply clarified to him that she did not think he was gay, and that her previous proclamation was just an attempt to rub him up the wrong way. She paused for a minute, taking another unnecessarily loud gulp of poison.

“Don’t you want to give your lovely mother any grandchildren hey Willie? Continue the family name?”

Another pause ensued. The thought of forcing another human being into the turmoil of a life attached to the Constadine family name made his stomach turn. Susanne’s words were beginning to make his skin sting. It was becoming more and more difficult not to react these days.

“You never leave your room. You have no friends. Not even a thought of a girlfriend or a job. You’re a bit of a loser aren’t you really Willie? Don’t you think?”

The feeling of disappointment emphasised by his mother in this rhetoric was very much a mutual one, and if anything more prominent on William’s behalf. There were so many things that William resented when it came to his parents. The only thing he could think of, if put on the spot, that he appreciated his mother and father for was Kevin’s fortnightly delivery of ‘British Babes Go Wild’ and Susanne’s lack of desire to make up for lost time.

“It’s such a waste of a life Willie, it really is.”

William was distinctly aware of this which softened to blow quite a lot. He liked facts. He liked them because you could never argue with them, reason with them, or get particularly offended by them. They just were.

The snide remarks continued along the same vein for a short while longer, until suddenly coming to an abrupt halt. The sound of footsteps echoed through the darkened hallway like a departing train leaving its platform. William felt blessed by the emptiness of the glass that was nestled within his mother’s sweaty palms as her shadow disappeared from underneath his doorway. His father worked away the majority of the time - or at least that was what he said was the reason for his absence - and was only really home on a few rare occasions each month. William was fairly reassured that his presence would not have changed the evenings’ proceedings much anyway. For Kevin ignorance was the utmost definition of bliss, something he proved through his non-existent relationship with his wife and child.

When his mother lashed out William always tended to switch off. He had become totally immune to the abuse and criticisms of pretty much anybody that decided to take offense to his being. On nights such as this one he would place himself contently upon his ragged leather armchair and gaze endlessly out of the window. He would asses and analyse the passing world that lay beyond the shivering glass, the world he intently ignored and avoided so successfully. He could reel off the contents of his front garden without a stutter or a falter, from the sinister looking gnome with the broken fishing rod to the proud flower collection situated next to the broken gate at the foot of the grassy patch. Susanne loved her flowers and held particular affection to her roses. William often pictured himself trampling them into oblivion or setting them alight with the perfect combination of petrol and matches. He did not have the courage to partake in such an aggressive outburst, an outburst that would undoubtedly draw attention. Even the thought of receiving the slightest bit of external attention made his throat dry up. She tended to her flowers daily, but complained to herself frequently about the sheer amount of effort that was required to maintain them thoroughly. It was as though her entire ability and desire to love was wasted upon this small section of dirt and muddled shrubbery. William thought that his mother’s rose bush was a perfect representation of the comparison between her preliminary ideas and eventual results of a family. The flourishing of the buds and the attention grabbing blood red petals the initial thought, clear and beautiful. The surface of the concept such a desirable and glorious image until the time consuming effort of caring and rearing on a daily basis kicks in. The eventual reality of everything represented by the hidden thorns beneath the cloak of leaves, pricking at your fingers the second your desire begins to slip. Susanne’s fingertips had quite fittingly been riddled with plasters and covered in tiny scars for as long as he could remember; an appropriate form of irony William thought.

                                                                                            

William knew nothing beyond his bedroom walls. It was his upbringing that had defined him and the way he addressed things; the same case for pretty much every living person on the planet. He was distressfully aware that he was just another victim of his surroundings, and his surroundings had forever been less than ideal. William always tried to maintain a degree of humour despite the foreshadowing of his empty future. It was the only reality that he knew of. He witnessed the realities of strangers through his window. It was like an on-going reality television show, of which he was always unsure of the authenticity. His mind always tossed to and fro about the idea of a better life, but eventually came to the same numbing conclusion each and every time. For people like him, people of such insignificance and peculiarity, the concept of better was a total impossibility. He would see people stop and admire the flowers outside his house, and he imagined that they painted a completely false image of what sat stagnantly behind. He also pictured the evil gnome suddenly sparking to life, hurdling the black brick wall with an agile somersault and chasing them down the street screaming abusively for a new fishing rod. William had a very active imagination, one that both filled him with pride and unnerved him slightly at the same time. William would see people swooning over the flowers on a daily basis. He was sure that they desired them, lusted after the creation of a similar beauty. The wondrous array of colour and content was, in his eyes, just an overwhelming mish-mash of never ending chaos. Each leaf and petal just another simple yet defining reason behind his lack of confidence, social reclusion and the unhappiness of how his life and personality had turned out. More relevantly though they represented the attention he should have received from his parents. The attention he could have received if Kevin would have pursued a different attraction and inhabited a different womb when he was a young man. He blamed his father’s clearly delusional initial view of Susanne for every misgiving he had experienced so far in his young life. She must have been attractive when she was a young woman because she had no redeeming features anymore and her erraticism was near-on impossible to live with. William pitied Kevin more than anything else though. He found that between his mother and father, he reasoned with him for his behaviour the most. He was stuck in the whirlpool of mid-life crisis and had managed the greatest of escapes. He could in so many ways understand his father’s absence because given the opportunity he would have pursued precisely the same direction without a second thought. In a lot of frustrating and warped kinds of ways William admired his father for achieving that one thing he craved so much.

His mother had fully retreated by the time the hands on the clock reached midnight. Silence always made William drowsy and acted as the warming anaesthetic that faded him gently out of obscurity. He always found that, although it being the most comfortable place for him, being alone was so incredibly exhausting. He spent most of his time in his own head which was in itself was flawed and gradually slipping away more and more as the days dragged by. He had no basis to compare of course due to his total lack of experience in even the most miniscule instance of sociality. He made the conscious decision to embark upon total disconnection before he even attained the ability to understand or remember. It was as though it was programmed into him from birth. Due to this he could never pinpoint a specific moment in his life that made him so exempt from expression. This could have simply been because there were just too many of course. He could not talk to either sex or relate to people of a younger, older, or similar age. He became overwhelmingly nervous when in the presence of other people no matter the quantity or quality of the company. The last time somebody approached him with a question he began to sweat profusely, panicked and threw up on their left shoe. The shoes looked brand new he remembered; they were garish in colour and chunky at the sole. He much preferred a simpler colour scheme when it came to fabrics and attire.

William was certain that he had developed some kind of condition or ‘ism’ that blatantly outcasted him from the outside world. He had even gone as far as nursing the idea that he had invented his own personality disorder that existed as of yet without title or explanation; a personal claim to fame. He was a deep thinker but could never really articulate, express or show his feelings properly. Nor could he deal with them appropriately when in his own company. When he tried to understand himself he was met by a crippling paranoia birthed by the idea that he was unable to even be alone without feeling a distinct partition between himself and his own mind. William had quickly come to terms with the fact that he and his internal conscious were two entirely different entities, but he hoped to rectify that one day with a firm handshake and a sweet embrace. He shuffled over to his bed after completing his usual nightly routine of dental and skin care. Brushing his teeth always took a while. He would accidentally distract himself and lose count of brushes and have to start all over again until he successfully reached one-hundred and fifty strokes. William lacked a lot of things but one thing he did not lack was a pride in his appearance. He wasn’t a bad looking young man and he was aware of that. He was quite a tall gentleman, six foot three to be precise, and had quite a sharpened jawline, a lot like those Hollywood types. In a different life he could imagine himself playing the next Bond or something along those lines. He had full, manly eyebrows and piercing pale blue eyes. If you were to look directly at them they would be nearly impossible to break from without effort. William would always try to hypnotise local cats when they sat on his window-ledge by staring and whispering demands under his breath. He once asked a black cat to crawl through his mothers’ bedroom window and urinate on her pillow; results to this were still eagerly awaited. His skin was like that of a porcelain doll and a permanent fuzz of stubble around his face made him look a lot more mature than he actually was. His hair was thick and dark. Stylishly unkempt and messy as if he had just rolled out of bed, exactly how the shows on television told him to do it. Despite all of this though William was a strong believer in the concept that beauty was only skin deep. He felt very much empty on the inside and thought he lacked any defining inner content to match his appearance.  It was this emptiness that rendered any physical advantages thrust upon him automatically void. Despite this William still looked after himself like any normal young man would, why he did not know. Maybe there was a faint hope of social adventure buried deep within him after all.

William’s head sunk slowly into his pillow as his eyelids gradually began to slide shut. The lack of consciousness crafted by sleep the most precious part of his days. He did not dream. Every night was a blank canvas sat in the studio of a lazy artist. William used to hear his mother explaining her dreams to his father over the dinner table through the transparent floor boards of his home. It was without doubt a shameless effort at attention seeking on Susanne’s behalf that was always unsuccessful. Every day birthed a more elaborate explanation, each one a more unequivocally blatant outcry than the last. The most recent discussion he overheard actually made William laugh for a brief moment, something that was just as much a rarity to him as female company or guiltless masturbation. Susanne was sat on the left hand side of the table. William knew this because the creaking of the chair on the left hand side was much more dramatic than its wooden compatriot sat in the opposite position. William’s spatial-awareness was quite impressive, especially from a distance, it had to be. Even if he could not distinguish between creaks, there was still a fifty-fifty chance of him picturing his mother sat in the correct place. There were only two chairs in the kitchen; this made for good odds. In fact, there were only two chairs in any room in the house, not including his own bedroom of course which was inhabited by just the one. She started every story the same.

“So I had another one of those dreams again last night.”

William always imagined Kevin’s inner self yelping out a silent scream at this point as he braced himself for another oncoming bombardment of nonsense.

“I’m sat in our bedroom alone and a man, a stranger, I don’t know who he is, comes in through the window. He is wearing all black with a hood up and he’s holding a gun, properly terrifying he is. He starts screaming at me but it’s in a language that I don’t understand and he starts firing around the room. He stops firing and kneels in front of me. He suddenly takes my hand and kisses it so very gently, and then BANG!”

She really exaggerated the gunshot in an attempt to wake Kevin up from his seemingly comatose state. Her voice went up a pitch as she began to spatter out her sentences more frantically and with a sprinkling of quizzical venom. It had gone from a casual recitation of dreams and fiction to what seemed like a full interrogation.

“He shoots me dead and starts to laugh psychotically above me. Can you imagine if that actually happened to me Kevin? Can you imagine if somebody killed me and you weren’t here to even try and help save my life? I mean I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I wasn’t there for you in that situation? I couldn’t cope knowing you were alone at night crying yourself to sleep through missing me. Pulling your hair out going crazy because I’m not around to tell you everything will be okay, lashing out at colleagues and friends through the pure frustration of feeling lost without the person you love, swimming in alcohol every Sunday night because it’s the only escape from the hurt of your husband not being around… Do you know what I mean Kevin? Do you understand anything I’m saying to you?”

The topic of his mother’s story was not necessarily the thing that he found humorous. William actually found it quite pathetic that the only way a wife could express her truest feelings and emotions to her husband was through a collection of fictional scenarios. He quickly realised though that he was in no position to criticise or comment on self-expression or emotional declaration. It was not the image of a gun-wielding foreigner dressed in a homemade Batman outfit clambering through a window and screaming obscenities in a brand new form of gibberish, although the image did tickle him slightly. It was not the way that she completely strayed off topic, which was something that suggested the entire dream itself was nothing but an emotive lie used as an attempt to draw reaction or change. It was her transition from calm and collected housewife to ranting and raving lunatic simply through Kevin’s lack of response that tickled him. Over and above anything though, it was his father’s ignorant and tactless response to the whole debacle that made William blurt out an unfamiliar chuckle.

“Was he Asian? I bet he was Asian.”

William was previously unaware that his father was a racist. He felt slightly closer to Kevin after this.

*               *               *

It was the critical light of the sun piercing through his dusty blinds that woke William the following morning. His blinds usually provided him with an added protection from the perverted sunlight, but that was not the case on this day. The weather was stunning, as much as he hated to admit it, probably the best it had been all year. The sound of laughter and general merriment filtered through his walls like the fog horn from a lighthouse warning nearby ships of an imminent danger. It was a Monday. William loved Mondays. The reason behind his adoration towards this typically morose day was solely to do with the way that it assisted his avoidance of his erratic mother. Susanne started work at an incredibly early hour and returned home from her daily exploits at a time that was late enough for William to make himself scarce. He did not actually know what her occupation was, not in the slightest. He never asked her or even had the desire to ask her. The Constadine’s were not the type of family that existed around many questions or discussions around their day to day comings and goings. William had no idea what his father worked as either for that matter. All he knew was that it involved him wearing a cheaply made, poorly tailored black suit that sat far too tightly around his broad shoulders to provide any sort of comfort. He also knew it involved a battered suitcase filled with blank paper, empty biscuit wrappers and stale crumbs from sandwiches of days gone by.

William didn’t have a job, nor had he ever particularly craved one. He knew that it would involve too much public interaction for him to deal with. Another thing William was certain of was that, as a twenty-two year old man, this was something that would furrow plenty of brows and entice feverish criticism. He did go for one job interview when he was seventeen at a local coffee shop though. He was having a confident week that week, probably stemmed from some sort of minor positive interaction in the school-yard. William thought back to a day that a new foreign exchange student asked him for directions. HH H  DJJHDnnnsdhdhde sent the eastern European sounding gentleman in entirely the wrong way as a joke because that was the cool thing to do he assumed. In the following weeks he found out that the young man he boldly misinformed ended up stumbling across the girls changing rooms and was immediately sent packing back to his home country branded a pervert by a letter written by the school head-teacher. William guessed that this was the week he was referencing. This was the only confident week in living memory and one that was incredibly short lived. He remembered getting through the interview with a decent amount of his nerves still intact and was given the opportunity of a trial shift the following afternoon. William also remembered accidentally knocking over a boiling hot jug of milk and scalding a small boy within the first couple of hours and immediately sprinting out of the establishment faster than he had ever moved in his life. Despite never walking over the threshold of Carlton Coffee House ever again he was more than assured that he was not the right person to fill the available position. He definitely was not expecting that days’ pay check to drop through his letterbox any time soon either.

Every day was roughly the same for William no matter the weather. Being a big fan of routine meant certain things had to be adhered to. He would bathe and groom himself in the same way that anybody else would, taking his sweet time in the shower. He loved the feeling of the water beating against his face and his chest and his back. It made him feel alive and tickled him slightly, in a way that he imagined a woman’s fingers to tickle during times of passionate physicality. He would work out using his massive leather armchair as a bench press, although it was becoming too easy for him over recent weeks. He would have to find another piece of household furnishing to smuggle into his room as a replacement quite soon. The garden bench was a definite contender. He would follow that up by jogging one-hundred laps around his small box garden, even if the filthy rain was pouring down in bucket loads.  The rain reminded him of being in the shower. He would then finish off by doing varied sets of push ups and sit ups until his arms and stomach began to quiver beneath that infamously arousing burn. William found that no matter how much exercise he did though he never seemed to add to his muscle content. His was quite a gangly frame, one that found it impossible to retain any form of bulk. After his daily exercises he would sit and learn a new word from his dictionary and use it in five separate sentences that he would then write into his brown leather notepad until its definition was forever engraved into his mind. His most recent word was ‘sesquipedaliophobia.’ This word when simplified meant ‘the fear of long words.’ He wondered, due to its definitively clear definition, why this word was made so lengthy. Its inventor was obviously a sadist and a frequent sufferer of bullying as a child. William knew that he would be able to remember this word in fewer sentences than usual due to its distinct irregularity and so settled on inscribing just the one that he found most relevant.

The man who invented the word sesquipedaliophobia is a prick.

He liked this sentence; he was proud of it. It was to the point and definitely factual. He liked facts. William did not mind curse words - both in written form and verbal form - and thought them to be appropriate in this day and age. He felt strongly about the topic at hand and therefore thought it necessary to extenuate his point with a curse word. They were so obvious and brutally honest. It was the twenty-first century after all and swearing was such a relevant form of language within his generation, and in many ways an example of modern-day poetry. He felt prophetic when stabbing the full stop onto the page. He felt like he had made a difference.

One thing William was truly proud of was his increasingly impressive vocabulary. He wished sometimes that he had somebody to share it with. This wish was quickly squashed by the realisation that if he were to share some words that they would become more common and lose their singularity. After his extended afternoon nap William would typically spend the rest of the day watching news channels and re-runs of nineties American sit-coms. He found American humour inferior when put up against that of the British, but far easier to comprehend. William appreciated ease. Sarcasm was not something he thought to be necessary or amusing but understood its relevance to his nations’ heritage. British comedy was riddled with it, like a linguistic chlamydia. Susanne would return at roughly twenty-five minutes past eight every evening. This was the point where William would scuttle up to his room, close his door and stay put until he was greeted by the niceties of the following morning. She never came up to check on him or acknowledge he even lived within the confines of the four walls of their home. This was the only thing his mother did that William appreciated. He found her consistent ignorance of him more a compliment that anything else; consistent at least until the brandy came knocking. Every single time she arrived home she would shout the same question through the house the very second her feet landed upon the facetious welcome mat.

“Kevin, are you home? Are you home love?”

He was never home, and even when he was he did not respond to the coarse cries of his wife with anything more than a forced grunt. William could always picture the look on Kevin’s face as he heard Susanne’s malicious keys rattling together behind the front door. He imagined his father running to the book case next to the fire place and pulling a secret lever that span the wooden frame around and hid him in the confides of the walls were he spent weeks on end, like a Borrower.

The weekends were always different for William. Routine was nullified as soon as Saturday came along. These were the days where he was unable to avoid contact with his parents if he stayed within the safety of his home. Their presence forced him out of the house which was an inconvenience to say the least. On these days he wandered the surrounding maze of streets and alleyways, each time a different route. He would sometimes treat himself to a wander through the local park depending on how busy his surroundings seemed or how pleasant the weather was. He had a favourite spot though. Somewhere that nobody would bother him or invade his beloved privacy. There was an abandoned scrap yard roughly six blocks up from his house and twenty minutes down the adjoining road to the right of the pharmacy. William always enjoyed pausing outside the pharmacy every once in a while to see the embarrassed faces of teenage boys buying condoms or sexual aids. It was the only form of embarrassment that he craved. Hours would be spent at the scrap-yard rooting through the mounds of discarded memories, searching through the forgotten remains of lives he would never live. It was his home away from home.

William’s hood was a permanent fixation around his pale face when he ventured into the chattering abyss. He found that people tended to ignore those sporting a hood. There must have been some form of interesting psychology around this that he could look into, but for now the simple fact that the method worked was enough. No explanation was required in this instance. Every now and then he would get lost beneath the fabric and accidentally bump into oncoming pedestrians. He would naturally mutter “sorry” under his breath as any normal person would. William though was not a normal person. Each time any word left his mouth that was directed at another person, he seemed to subconsciously speed up his walk to a casual run, as if the very fact that he had spoken to another human being would cause his brain to implode beneath his skull. William had a peculiar run. He moved with the similar awkward wobble of a penguin and the directional abilities of a dyspraxic crab, which was probably why his classmates taunted him so much during PE lessons at school. Whenever he spoke he was reminded of how whiney his voice sounded as it echoed right through his body. This always made him feel embarrassed. His voice made him cautious to communicate and filled him with anxiety. It was a Monday evening though. He often had to remind himself of days because he would far too often allow his mind to wander towards future misfortunes. William had another four-and-a-bit days of safety before he had to dive head first back into the chasm of public awkwardness again.

Susanne didn’t drink on weekdays, only Sunday nights. The concept of routine was obviously something passed down to William through his mother’s side of the family, not that he was aware of any other family beyond his parents. She had become accustomed to the piercing hangover that wrapped itself around her head every Monday morning. On the first evening of a new week she would water and trim her flowers and immediately head straight to bed. At least she would unless Kevin was home, which was not often. Every other night of the week, after her moment of affection in the front garden and the discovery that Kevin was once again absent, she would place a cassette tape into the dated music system in the front room and crank the volume up unforgivably high. It was usually country and western. William always wondered what the attraction to this horrendous genre of music was. Maybe this was the real reason his father could not bear to spend any time at home. Whenever William heard it, no matter where he was, he wanted to drive his head through the nearest available brick wall until he was gifted the pleasure of deafness. His mother would then raucously sing along to each and every track as if she were on stage in the Royal Philharmonic. She probably didn’t have that bad a singing voice in reality, but to William it was the most aggressive sound that could possibly pollute the air, like a thousand glass bottles crashing together. He would push his ear-plugs as far into his ears as physically possible and, after preparing himself for bed, would zone out reading the daily local newspaper that was delivered by the whistling postman each morning. Susanne thought that the delivery of the paper had stopped because the postman had taken a dislike to her for some unknown reason. In reality it was just William that kept stealing it away and their lack of communication that caused the entire ridiculous conspiracy. He would read until tiredness gratefully embraced him and rocked him to sleep with its shy, unassuming lullaby. On Monday nights the ear-plugs weren’t a necessity. William was sure that his ears had begun to droop due to the force so regularly placed upon them. They were probably just as grateful for the start of a new week as he was. At least they would be if ears had the ability to feel in the same way a human being could. Feelings were quite an alien concept to William which meant he could sympathise with inanimate objects quite well. He always pictured himself coming back as a wheelbarrow in another life, if he were a Buddhist. This was due to his ability to keep rolling onwards despite heavy loads; the heavy load being Susanne and Kevin the majority of the time. He also believed the wheelbarrow to be a void concept due to the boom of motorisation, and imagined they lived a peaceful life. His puddle-blue eyes closed and slipped into another dreamless sleep. As William lay motionless breathing in and out accompanied by an almost silent snore, his rigid body awaited another typical, pre-planned day. Exactly the type of day he excelled in.