Hello people. I hope you’re all doing well. Just wanted to say a few words before posting the story. I’m very aware that the themes of my stories, the characters, the vile language, scenes of abuse etc… can be triggering/upsetting, and also that a lot of you just might not want that kind of depressing imagery dropping into your inbox to darken your day. I’m certain that a lot of you thought that you were signing up for something different, because you hit Subscribe after reading a non-fiction piece of a completely different nature. My writing is almost entirely dark, social realism, set on the fringes of society, where poverty, violence, addiction are all ever-present. Often in my stories, nothing happens. Other times, there is violence and sadness.
For example, in the last piece, the reader was seeing the scene play out through the eyes of Charles Winston, a clearly troubled and troubling character, a 50-something-year-old man who is abusive to his wife. This character speaks in a disgusting way and behaves in a disgusting way. But I can’t change the way he speaks or behaves, I have to go with it, otherwise my writing won’t be honest. It’s important to me that my writing stays honest. It’s the only way I know how to write, and the only way I want to write. What I’m saying now might sound pretentious, but that’s how it is for me.
Anyway, to cut to the chase. Please, if the stuff that I post on here is not for you, for whatever reason, PLEASE UNSUBSCRIBE. I’ll feel a lot less guilty about posting certain stories, and it will be better for you to not have to see it! I’m never upset or offended by anyone unsubscribing. I totally understand!
OK, so in the last story I posted, Jacqui Winston was seen knocking on a bedroom door and shouting for her son to get up for his paper round. And Charles Winston heard his son wheeling his bike out the front door, while he was puking in the toilet….
DEAN SPEEDS DOWN the hill on his bike like an Olympic ski jumper, keeping to the centre of the road, avoiding the frost-laced pavements. Halfway down the hill, Dean can see Cat Man casting his shadow under a streetlight, down on his knees at the entrance to a driveway, meowing at a stray. Dean whooshes past him like a gust of wind, veers off and turns right, just before the hill curves down to the left.
Most of the town is still asleep, but the kitchen light is on in Angie Boyd’s house as Dean passes, and a taxi is waiting outside with the meter running. Dean stops his bike with a skid outside Omar’s shop. Bob is already there, squatting in front of the locked door, cutting the cords tied around the bundles of newspapers with a knife; looking like a hobo from an American B-movie. Dean leans his bike against the railing and walks down the concrete steps, crunching under his feet the salt that Bob has sprinkled over the frost.
“Alright,” Bob mumbles gruffly.
“Alright, Bob,” Dean mumbles back.
Bob might be forty or he might be fifty. He also might as well be dead, Dean thinks. Better to be dead than a slave.
A light turns on inside the shop. The sound of the key turning in the lock. The door opens and Paula, Omar’s Portuguese wife, lets them in. She is in her dressing gown and slippers and her eyelids are puffy from sleep. Under the fluorescent light, Dean notices fresh cuts and scratches on Bob’s face and bald scalp. Maybe he fell down some stairs in a drunken stupor, but more likely his brother administered another lesson with the cricket bat.
Every morning at 4:30 Bob signs for deliveries and stores them in Omar’s garage while his master sleeps. Then he prepares the newspapers. If a paperboy fails to show up, Bob covers the round. During the day he sweeps away the leaves and cigarette ash from outside the shop. Mops the floor. Keeps the shelves stocked. Takes in more deliveries. Dances like a cobra to Omar’s tune. And for his loyal service Bob is rewarded at the end of each day not with cash but rather a couple of bottles of Scottish wine. And on days when the work is particularly heavy, Omar lets Bob take a can of Special Brew from the fridge for the calories.
Bob lives with his twin brother, five doors along from Dean. When he staggers past their window, Dean’s dad points at Bob through the glass and says that’s what an alcoholic looks like. But Dean feels sorry for Bob. Ever since, when he was ten, he borrowed a bucket from Bob for a water fight with the other street kids, and when he took the bucket back, Bob’s brother answered the door holding a cricket bat. Dean was taken aback because he’d never seen Bob’s brother before. The man was well groomed and wearing an exquisite Italian suit — the complete opposite of how Dean had imagined Bob’s brother would look — even if they did have the same face. But mostly Dean was taken aback by the cricket bat.
“It wasn’t his bucket to lend!” Bob’s brother shouted in Dean’s face, snatching the bucket from his hands. “It’s MY bucket! MINE!” Then lowering his tone, he said, “But don’t you worry, kid, I’ve taught him a lesson he won’t be forgetting in a hurry.”
As Dean was walking away, Bob’s face appeared in a small upstairs window, black and blue and with blood running from the corner of his mouth, like a hostage in a besieged embassy. But what can Bob do, he’s got nowhere else to go.
Dean checks his delivery list, scoops up the correct number of newspapers, plus three extra copies of the Sun to post through his own letterbox. Paula never checks the list. The next paperboy arrives and while Paula is distracted, Dean slips a Mars bar up his sleeve from under the counter, and heads out with his orange paperboy satchel hanging off his shoulder.
Dean’s round covers the top half of the hill and the handful of streets that loop off it, including his own. He pedals quickly past Angie Boyd’s house to build up momentum before tackling the hill. The kitchen light has been turned off and the taxi has left. On the hill, Dean sees his father coming down. He slips down a driveway, opens a porch door, stuffs their newspaper through the letterbox, and stays inside the porch until his old man has passed.
Ever since he got his head booted in by a gang of teenagers on his own doorstep, Dean’s father has been a ticking time bomb. Probably brain damage. Dean avoids interacting with him. Instead of asking his father for lunch money, it’s easier just to tear out pictures of the topless page-three girls from the Sun and exchange them with creepy kids at school for unwanted cheesespread sandwiches.
Thanks as always for reading.
Oops! Should have proof read before putting it out. Was it a bucket Dean borrowed or a ladder? Obviously a bucket. I'm a sloppy writer, sorry.
Can I resubscribe?