First Submission For The Interested

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

Okay. This is the first piece of longer-than-short fiction I've written since . . . well since a very long time ago. I offer it up to the lions. Maul me to your heart's content. I need to get my writing muscles back into shape before I tackle anything serious. It's derivative, not highly original, but if I don't write something I'll get scared and back off completely. It started off as an experiment, and got a bit bloated as my prose usually does. Enough apologising. Here it is - with swearing and oh-so-cool drugs references.



Sovereign Carriage

“Tell you what, why don’t I skin up and you keep an eye out for the guard?”
“Me?”
“Have to. I’ve got to concentrate. If this train bumps about much more I’m going to spill everything.”
“You better not.” We’d been chatting in a desultory fashion for three stations. Chris and I had been telling stories about school, and University, and family. All the usual shit you talk about on trains with strangers. Sex. Rock and Roll. Drugs. He grabbed my book off the table between us and rested it on his knee along with my tin. I grinned and pointed to the “No Smoking” sign on the window.
“Seen it.” Said Chris. He ignores it. I keep my eyes open, sat up in my seat. It’ll be embarrassing to explain to my parents why I’ve been arrested by transport police, or whatever. We were alone in the carriage, had been since a woman with a push-chair got off an hour ago. The ticket collector had been past five minutes previously, looking disapprovingly at our bags propped on the seats next to us; we’d both given our bags window seats so they could enjoy the view, such as it was at this time of night.
The train lurched, left this time, and Chris swore in a disinterested way, without really thinking about it. I kept watch with half an eye, my heart already beginning to beat a little faster at the idea of doing something illegal. I began to worry a little; the gear was pungent, dark, a gift from Robbie who shared my house in Edinburgh. A big lad with a big mouth, but easy enough to get along with as long as you smoked a bit, drank, fucked around. He’d given me the dope as an early Christmas present. I can’t remember who brought drugs up first, me or Chris. It just seemed to come up naturally. He was easy to talk to.
Yellow smoke drifted up from between Chris’ fingers. I did a double take, realised it was just burning hash, tinted by the street-lamps outside the window. We were passing through some shithole or other, all warehouses and blind windows and nails and spray-paint. I shook my head and looked away from the window. Chris caught my motion, flicked his gaze out of the carriage while his fingers continued their delicate work.
“Sign of the times.” He said, shaking his head in turn, in mock sadness or maybe just mockery. He finished his craft, presented the joint for me to inspect, proffered it for me to spark. I shook my head at him in my turn and told him to go ahead. I look back and forth, and am confident that the carriage is empty and will stay that way for at least another half hour until we strike Exeter. He produced flame, inhaled, held it, exhaled. Another drag, and he handed the spliff to me. We passed it back and forth, hand to hand.

Tell-tale signs indicated that Chris was getting more from the experience than I was. He held each draught longer, half-closed his eyes. Leant back a little. He seemed to relax as we smoked, and there was no need for any more conversation. It was as if each time he inhaled he was taking something else into his lungs along with the hash and tobacco and burning paper.
Me, I was an amateur still. I coughed on my third drag, eyes watering. Chris smiled and for a moment it seemed to me that he was mocking me. I was young and still sensitive, my skin unthickened, and I handed him the joint back with a gesture I thought was dismissive but which was probably callow. He took it and he looked at me as I coughed, letting the joint burn in his fingers. My throat was dry and my face wet. I reached across to my dufflebag, fumbling out a bottle of sprite and discovering it was empty.
“Have some of mine,” said Chris. He held the in one hand, and expertly opened a side compartment of his duffle bag. He pulled out a bottle, passed it over to me. The label was torn, obscured by water damage, and I was immediately suspicious.
You can relax with someone, trust them as a buddy, even engage in illegal and illicit narcotic experiences with them and yet part of you never lets down your guard. You know that they could be fooling you. Waiting for you to fall asleep before they cut your throat and steal your watch. My first month at boarding school I couldn’t get to sleep until I was sure every other boy in the room was asleep. I used to worry that they were watching me, pretending to sleep, waiting for some secret sign I wouldn't understand to get up and approach me, stealthily, with the empty masks of obedience they wore for the teachers missing in the dark. I knew they meant to hurt me, somehow, I knew they kept weapons in their bedside closets and under their pillows. I knew their teeth were sharp. I woke up screaming for a fortnight, until the House Master pulled some strings and arranged a private room for me. Of course this lead to bullying, but at least the bullying took place in the day. At night I could lock my door and be safe.
Seen from that sort of perspective, my suspicion of Chris was understandable if not entirely mature. He offered me the bottle again. There was no label on it and an absurd worry that he was offering me domestos suddenly welled up. The casual gesture across the table suddenly became awkward, avignette that threatened to stretch the second out until my reticence became insulting. Another coughing fit from me. I grabbed the bottle from him with a nod. He smoked. I pulled the cork out, smelled rotten fruit.
“The purpose of language is to confuse, rather than to communicate; unambiguous communication is the end of identity.”
Yellow liquid splashed onto my hands and lap. I jumped. The entire carriage was smashed into darkness, I fumbled Chris’ bottle. We’d rammed into a tunnel without warning. I could see my face, and Chris’, reflected in the window against the darkness of the tunnel. They seemed very close together, both of them pale and slightly amorphous. As suddenly as we’d entered the tunnel we left it. Empty countryside.
Sighing at my own foolishness, I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand, dab at my jeans ineffectively with a napkin grabbed from the detritus of an abandoned Happy Meal. Am distracted when Chris hands me our joint back.

“Tell me what that means,” I asked him. “What you just said about language.”
“Me? I never said anything mate. You’re hearing things.” He smiled. His smile seemed absurdly knowing. Foolishly wise. Pleased with itself. An avuncular smile, but not the reassuring kind. The other kind. I realised with a start that my fingers were burning. I looked down at the joint, burnt away to ashes, jerked my fingers, scattering ash on the table. Followed the falling ash, for a second, then looked back at Chris whose sinister expression had surely been just a trick of the light. He was all concern. I felt like a prick.
“Have the spliff or the wine, man. Too many vices at once can be confusing.” He winked. I felt uncomfortable again.
“You have the joint, I’m mashed already.” I handed it back to him. Our hands touched across the table and I felt a totally unexpected electric shock of revulsion. The skin of his hand seemed cracked, like a mudflat. There were scabs between his thumb and forefinger, dark and malignant in the shifting light of the carriage. I felt suddenly as if I needed a bath or a shower. Or another swig of wine. I had another swig of wine. It was wine. I savoured it, swirlign it around in my mouth. It made my tongue tingle slightly, like toothpaste. I’m no connisuer of wine, but I know what I like and what I normally like is lager. This was different, fruity. I liked the taste. I had another swig, before suddenly worrying. What if Chris' scabs were signs of some illness? I was sharing his bottle after -
“ – scene?” Chris had been talking to me.
The word set off another rush of paranoia. I’d been sitting there like a fresher, stoned and pissed on a few drags and a mouthful of wine. I tried to remember what we’d been talking about for the last five minutes. I know I’d been talking, I’d been gesturing with the wine bottle. I searched Chris’ face for some clue but found nothing there except a sudden polite concern for the health of a stranger.
“Yell if you want some more of this,” he said. The spliff was about half-smoked. I shook my head and cradled the bottle between my legs for a moment. It was opaque, dark, probably glass. I wondered idly where the cork had gone, what was written on the faded label. I realised the bottle was half-empty. I began to worry, and to quell my worry took another gulp.
“Ow.” My mouth filled suddenly with a sharp, meaty taste that mingled horribly with the fruit-taste of the wine. I’d cut myself on the lip of the bottle. I put it down on the table, mouth filled with blood, feeling young and stupid. I picked up the napkin and spat as discretely as I could into it. I feel hot and embarrassed. I know I'm making a fool out of myself. Chris is shaking his head, obviously amused, but having the good manners at least not to laugh out loud. I gesture for him to take the bottle and try to tell him it's dangerous, but just drool blood and spit instead.
“Sign language now, is it?” He left the bottle where it was. I stood up, shaking my head, half prepared to grab my duffle bag there and then and move to another carriage. I felt so stupid. Like a child allowed to stay up past his bed-time, the butt of the adult’s jokes. Out of my depth. A fish out of water. Confused, Scared. Useless.

Tail between my legs (metaphorically) I slunk off to the toilet. It was, predictably, engaged. I looked back down the carriage through the smoky glass door to where we were sitting, but all I could see was a thin haze of smoke from this angle, in the middle of several dozen empty, dead chairs. My face stared at me in my reflection, and I realised ruefully that I look like a clown. My eyes are ringed from too much "study", too many late nights. My face is pale from too little food (too much beer, too many clubs, too many lies). My lips are red as blood, with blood. It has dripped onto my jumper and several little drops huddle in among the fibres of wool like the red stuff we used to have on ice-cream. Baby’s blood we called it and told scare stories about the ice-cream man.
“May I get past?” The toilet was no longer occupied, it’s inhabitant a squat, red, kidney-bean of a man in a cheap polyester suit. The front of his trousers was marked with an old, spread stain, and he stank of too many hotel rooms and too much cheap baccy, and too much cheap liquor. I felt sick. I pushed past him without a word, the coarseness of his jacket bruising my hand like sandpaper.
“Have some manners!” he whined at me and I thought I heard a threat in his words, but he made no effort to follow me or bar my passage. I made it into the toilet just in time, kicking the door shut in the tiny, filthy room, leaning over the sink (not the toilet - I don’t lean over toilets - ever). I spewed up the contents of my belly – dark liquid, mostly, coffee and coca-cola and a few gobbets of half-digested meat. My mouth stung when stomach acid met cut. I felt as if I’d been stuffed full of foam padding, overstuffed like a fat sofa, and when I’d finished vomitting I pushed the flush (to drop the contents of my stomach onto the train tracks, no doubt, for some curious animal to pick through) and sat down, hard, on the (closed) toilet seat.
You know when you’re in an unfamiliar place and you catch sight of a reflection? How sometimes there seems to be someone behind you and then you realise it’s actually just yourself, reflected once in the silver and one again in the glass of the mirror – a sort of double image? No? I get it all the time. I jumped, but then relaxed again. I guessed that Chris had used a lot of gear in the joint, and I'm not usually a heavy smoker. I have no head for it.
Seen from this angle, I don’t look so bad after all. I shake my head (seeming to be my major motor function those days), splash water on my face, wipe my mouth, hawk up a few snotty, bile-filled, bloody kisses for the sink and make my way back to my travelling companion.
The seat was empty.
Yellow ash. A roach stubbed out on the cover of my book, my tin missing, my coat gone as well. An empty glass bottle on the table, keeping company with my empty plastic bottle of sprite.
“Sign of the fucking times.” I snarled, and slumped down in the abandoned seat. My “mate” had run off with my coat, my bag and my gear. I couldn’t even complain about it, it was my own stupid fault. My head was spinning and I was fairly sure I’d been spiked with something. I’m not usually that trusting with strangers; I’ll not give them the time if it’s dark, or I’m by myself, much less let them skin up with my gear on the strength of ten minutes notice. I went quickly from one end of the train to the other and I didn’t see Chris, although I saw plenty of other people.

“Tell me,” I ask them each in turn, “have you seen a man with two duffel bags and two coats come this way?” But they just look at me with a combination of fear and distaste, muttering variations on a theme.
“My bag and coat have been stolen.” I tell them.
“Have seen nothing” They say to me.
“You must have seen him, he’s about my height, darker hair, paler, same sort of jumper.”
“Seen nothing” They whisper it like a refrain and I start to get angry. I reach the back of the train, where the buffet car is. There's a fat, useless, older woman with make-up plastered so thick on her face that it's almost like she's trying to keep it on, or trap it and stop it slipping away. The sweat has washed sticky trails in her mascara, so it seems. She tells me she’s seen nothing at all of Chris or my bag or my coat (or my drugs). She tries to sell me a pork pie, or a packet of crisps, or a miniature of brandy. I can smell her, and it makes my stomach twist again. I check the final door at the back of the train, and I can see the dark track illuminated in the rear lights for about five feet, and nothing else. The woman at the buffet whines, a nasal whine, telling me that there's nothing back there. I can see that. She doesn't need to treat me like I'm stupid. I back off, afraid she's going to try and follow me, and I realise she's not wearing a bra and for some reason that just makes me angrier.
The train hasn’t stopped since I went to the toilet, I know he has to be on the train somewhere. I head back up towards the front of the train, looking for a guard or the ticket collector, asking everyone (again), getting agitated. They answer me the same way, I have to describe Chris and my coat and bag again and again, and I get angrier and angrier that they find my problems so insignificant they can't remember a conversation of five minutes past. I find someone in uniform halfway up the train, just past my seat.
Yellow skinned, the ticket collector stares at me through bottle-bottom glasses, slack jawed, yellow toothed, his fingers stained yellow with tobacco. I hope he dies of lung cancer. I grind my teeth as I tell him the story again, and that Chris has to be on the train because it hasn’t stopped, does the man think I’m an idiot? I start to wonder how a man can vanish from a moving train. It’s like a thirties thriller. I expect to see Hannay at any moment. I chuckle, my sudden amusement at odds with my anger. The train grinds to a halt and I'm nearly thrown off my feet into the ticket collector. I'm overcome with the certainty that I do not want to touch this man.
Sign outside the window says “Exeter.” It’s not my stop, but the little ticket collector tells me I need to report lost property to the lost property office. I explain (patiently) to the fuckwit that my things aren’t lost, they’re stolen. He stares at me blandly and I can't tell what he's thinking. My skin starts to burn again, I can feel myself blushing. He obviously takes offence at my attitude because he demands to see my ticket. I try to stay calm while I explain that my ticket was in the pocket of my jacket, which has been stolen, and he immediately gets a look of stupid cunning in his eyes. I can feel the eyes of the other passengers on me. They are listening to the conversation, even though they pretend not to be.

“Tell me another one, son.” He says. He smirks, confident he’s caught me in an obvious lie. The others in the carriage look at each other and I realise that they think I’m a fare dodger with an elaborate story. How stupid do they think I am? This is a ridiculous story to come up with. He thinks I'm a criminal.
Me. I’m a law abiding citizen, I tell him (apart from the drugs, and a bit of rowdiness, and maybe some shoplifting, and some other minor, little, irrelevant things, not that I tell him that). I'm not a criminal, I've a passenger and I demand that he sorts out my problem. He's seen my ticket himself, I know, not half an hour ago.
“Have to report this.” He says it self importantly. Pompous, stupid, jumped-up little twat. My teeth are grinding against each other, I can hear them. People are staring at me. I hate being stared at by strangers.
“You do that.” I say. “Fuck it, I’ll do it. It’s my stuff that’s been stolen.” Seeing the wine bottle, which I hadn’t realised I’d picked up, the little man becomes even more viciously self righteous. Swearing at him was a mistake, I know it, and I wish I could take that "fuck" back.
“Been drinking sir?” He asks. Supercilious, whining tone. A woman smirks. Another complains that the train is being delayed. I can see the other passengers exchanging glances, admiring the ticket-collectors acuity and cool handing of the situation. They think I'm drunk. There is fog in Exeter station. I am ejected from the train by a guard. I try and explain, calmly and rationally, that there has been a mistake. I am told to go home and sleep it off.
The guard has the idea that I live in Exeter. As the train starts to pull away from the station, leaving me high and dry and stranded in Exeter, miles from home, I can see people through the dirty windows of the carriages laughing at me. They’re sharing a drink, actually laughing at me. One young man points me out to his girlfriend as he paws at her, and the pair of them fall to laughing and kissing at the same time, barely able to snog for the amusement they find in my predicament. I shout at them, I run alongside the train for a moment, shouting at them that it’s not funny, and they both stare at me through the window with sheep-eyes, vacant and witing to be - but then I fall back and in the last carriage I can see by the -

- yellow light of the carriages Chris, sat in his chair, flicking through my book, smoking my spliff, ignoring me. He’s got my duffel bag open and strewn across the table, and he’s looking through my stuff, and pawing at my stuff with his filthy, ditrty, scabby fingers. I scream and my mouth fills with blood again as I tear the cut open. Chris looks right at me and he’s got no expression at all, nothing, and I find it impossible to believe that I thought he was anything other than a lying, cheating, treacherous, thieving little bastard. His face is nothing like my face, nothing at all, it’s like a -
- yellow papers caught in the wind of the train train pulling up to the platform, but nobody gets out and the doors don’t open, and I can’t see anyone in any of the carriages as I walk down the long way to the -
- yell at the top of my lungs, stranded on a station in a strange city I don’t know (I pass it whenever I go to University, and when I come home, and a hundred other times in my life, and I know people who lvie there - or claim that they do - but I’ve never actually visited). I find a phone and desperately search my pockets for -
- oh, for a ten-pence piece. I try reversing the charges but there’s a fault with the line, I’m stood in the station in the fog, and I can’t even phone my parents to tell them where I am, and I can’t believe there’s nobody else on the station (except for the tramp at the far end of Platform 2 who’s wrapped up in his coat on a bench and paying no attention to me. None at all.)
- “Yull huv ta cum wiv me” says a voice, “Wu cunt huv ahl thus showtin and yelln un th’ plutfurm” There’s a porter, in a uniform, but I can see that he’s not really a porter at all, btu I can’t see what he is, and when he grabs my arm I have to go with him, and he tells me that my coat and my jacket are in the lost property office. I tell him I saw them on the train, they were on the train to Plymouth, and they were being pawed through and touched and looked at.
- “Oh oi dunt gnaw neethin bat thut.” Says the porter, and I have to squint to understand him, my brain is pounding, he makes nonsense of the language, I can’t understand his accent, but I go with him (I go with this stranger in a strange place, to another strange place, because I want my bag back).
- yellow light, sulphurous, slick, shining through the fog from the lamps outside, illuminates the office and the pale face behind the desk. The uniform is dark, the room is dark, my head is dark with the tinny jazz that drifts from the invisible speakers, and I know I’m going to be sick again but I can’t be sick, not in front of strangers. The porter has disappeared, just me and the lost-property office attendant (and someone else, in the stacks behind the wooden office desk, moving slowly around, shuffling and wheezing and grunting). But they’ve got my bag (I think it’s my bag. Yes, it’s my bag) and I pull on my jacket, which has an opaque bottle of in the pocket which I grab gratefully, realising I won’t be left alone in this big city by myself, I’ll at least have something to drink and maybe even something to smoke if I’m lucky and my tin is in my other pocket, which it feels like it might be.

“Sign here” says the attendant, pushing his clipboard towards me. I sign. “Check the contents.” He says, a command, his voice is dead (maybe he’s dead, or maybe it's not him). I drag the duffelbag towards me and unzip it, and I start to snigger and snot runs out of my nose, and I can feel drool on my chin, and I start to cry because I realise I can’t tell if the contents of the bag are real, or just mannequin limbs that I don’t remember packing, and I can’t remember what the difference is between real ones and plastic ones, and I can’t remember why it’s wrong to have a duffle bag full of arms and legs, and I just stand there, sobbing and snuffling and staring at my bag and trying to remember what I’m doing here with a sack of parts, and the kind men take me down to the platform and show me a seat where I can lie down and have a little rest, and when I swig from the bottle it makes me warm and I can sleep at last with my bag and my coat and my -



So there we have it. At least the influences are fairly obvious ;)