Billy (a novelette)

by Shaun Whittington

Billy

  By

  Shaun Whittington

  Copyright 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  The author uses UK English

  I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know.

  Ernest Hemingway

  When your day is long and the night

  The night is yours alone

  When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on

  Don't let yourself go

  -REM

  Prologue

  The hysterical screaming of young voices pierced his sensitive ears; almost making them wince as the noise assaulted them. It was a surreal, sullen moment, and his mind refused to comprehend what was happening, it was as if he was drunk and had no control over his body. He looked around in a frightened daze, and saw the dead man slumped to the floor, the knife sticking out of his chest. Also, blood covered the floor of the room, and it didn't just belong to the dead man. It belonged to other young souls who were no longer alive, and to others that were injured.

  His legs shook so violently he found it hard to stand, as he scanned the room with his frantic eyes looking for his son. Where was he? He couldn't see, as the majority of children that were shrieking, were simultaneously running around like antelopes from a fire. Some ran in terror and didn't know where they were going; some held onto their bleeding wounds, while others stood still in a state of shock and screamed, but some didn't, and were gazing into nothingness as the shock smothered their young frames.

  He stepped over a young body and his shoes made bloodied footprints on the hard floor as he headed towards the soft-play area. He tried to call out, but his voice had been stolen by fear—by the horror of the episode he had just witnessed, and was still witnessing. There seemed no escape from the surreal nightmare he was imprisoned in, as his tremulous legs began to snowball upwards and his arms began to judder uncontrollably.

  Fuelled with fear and adrenaline, he scanned the soft-play area and could clearly see two young bodies hiding, desperately trying to outwit the bad man, but they didn't realise he couldn't hurt them anymore. It seemed callous, but he wasn't bothered about them, as all he wanted was to hold his own flesh and blood.

  Again, he tried to call out, but his voice was paralysed. The cacophony of disturbed wails and moans coming from behind him, never fazed him while he continued to scan for his boy.

  At last he heard a young voice whimper out, "Daddy." A small sensation of relief brushed over him; he tried to call out but could only muster a noise, which was a vast improvement on his last effort.

  The young four-year-old ran at the adult, his arms outstretched and relief evidently clear on his face. Both father and son embraced, both father and son cried unashamedly, both father and son had survived.

  As other adults ran into the room, the screams and hollers of distressed voices rang through Billy's head. One seemed to stand out more than the rest. It was a voice from a woman he recognised. Her name was Pauline and the hysterical woman screamed constantly, "Katie! My Katie! Oh God help us! God help us!"

  The deceased young Katie was on her back, her eyes were like timeless eyes of a statue and as wide as golf balls. The lifeless body lay, and her skin was snow white, like polished ivory. As he hugged his boy, he tried to stand to also comfort the woman who had lost her Katie.

  His legs were like rubber, and he almost fell on top of his son. "It's all over," he whispered in his son's ear, and they both embraced tightly.

  How wrong he was. It wasn't over. This was just the beginning.

  Chapter One

  Wherever he went, whatever he did, he was always constantly surrounded by the reminder of death. No matter what drug he took or how much alcohol he consumed, Billy Jones couldn't escape the mental prison that had been passed onto him nearly three years ago. His tortured mind had beaten him and had forced him to lose his job, become a slave to anti-depressants, and be dependent on the state to keep him secure.

  He awoke at nine o'clock and crawled his way out of bed of his one bedroom apartment. Wearing nothing but a pair of socks, he yawned loudly as he approached his living room and plonked himself onto the second-hand couch he had bought him by a kind relative.

  He flicked the remote and began watching meaningless daytime television, and his appearance of being naked, apart from the socks on his feet, never bothered him. His curtains were drawn; the spring season marched on and he welcomed the steady surge in temperature outside. He had no heating in his place and after enduring the coldest winter in twenty years—this was according to news reports, Billy was quite happy to let it all hang out after spending the last couple of months of going to bed fully clothed.

  He scowled at the TV and at the daytime chat show that was on the channel he selected. It was the same old stuff. On the show there was people who had never worked a day in their life, they were dressed in fake gold, stolen clothes and were lucky if they had a full set of teeth. The people that looked reasonably presentable still looked like they were in urgent need of a dentist and said the F word in every sentence they used, which was obviously bleeped out by the TV company, as the show was being televised at ten in the morning.

  He sighed at the state of the country. People were getting lazier, people were getting heavier, and people were getting angrier. He read in a newspaper a week before about a thirty-year-old woman being battered to death by a sixty-three-year-old man for 'stealing' his parking space at the local supermarket. Was this the society he really wanted to bring his son up into?

  He lived at the top of a six-block apartment and never went out his way to get to know any of the other five sets of residents. It was an extraordinary situation; nobody went out their way to speak to anyone. It was like an apartment block for the introverts. If there were too much noise coming from one of the apartments, nobody would complain. As far as Billy was aware, they all pretty much avoided one another.

  It was a Friday now, and Billy hadn't left his apartment for three days. He had spent most of his days sitting in the apartment half dressed, snacking on anything he could get his hands on, but he was slowly losing the will to live and he also needed food. Decent food!

  He got up and strolled to the bathroom to drain his aching bladder. He took a quick look in the bathroom mirror and checked his appearance. His dark hair had gotten longer and his face was sporting five days of growth. He didn't look untidy; he just looked different to how he looked the week before. He kind of liked the way he looked, for now, but he knew that after he got to a certain stage of neglect, he would get his hair cut off followed by a clean shave.

  After his shower, Billy slumped onto the couch and saw, not for the first time, an image of the young girl again. Here eyes were wide, doll like, her face remained emotionless and still. The sad individual took a hard gulp and shook his head almost trying to temporarily remove the image from his mind like an etch-a-sketch.

  He cursed under his breath and grabbed his keys, as he left his apartment with vamoose and walked down the staircase, he saw one of his neighbours passing him on the stairs. Neither one of them muttered a word to one another, as Billy left for the supermarket and looked up to the murky sky, with its sun glowing lazily as if its power supply was draining. A shy, puffy grey cloud whizzed over the sky so hurriedly, that to Billy it looked like it was being chased by an invisible entity.

  *****

  Joseph's young, fragile mind raced as he played with his superhero action figures. At that moment Spiderman was kicking Batman's but
t, and Superman wasn't even getting a look in, as the youngster only had one pair of hands. He grabbed his Spiderman with its legs bent uncomfortably backwards—a manoeuvre that could only be humanly performed by a contortionist, and with his left hand, he smacked Spidey off Batman by head butting him. Nobody had sat down to inform the youngster that Spiderman and Batman were both actually good guys, and that fighting one another had never been done before, but the youngster was enjoying himself and was lost in his own world of innocence that enveloped him.

  He suddenly stopped playing, and looked to his left and stood to his feet. He walked towards the window, got onto his tiptoes and peered out into the back garden. He had just finished school, and would have liked to play outside, but he had no one to play with. He missed his best friend, Craig. He could still remember him...just, and a quilt of sadness suffocated the youngster when he thought about him.

  He shook his head to shake off the image of his best buddy, someone he would never see again, and picked up Spidey and Batman once again, but his melancholy was hard to shift. He placed the action figures down onto his side table and began to walk downstairs. He had temporarily lost the skill to use his imagination, but it would soon be back. At least he had tomorrow to look forward to. It may just be the park again, but he'd be with his dad, and that was the most important thing.

  His dad always seemed sad, and although such a young age, the youngster felt the need to embrace him at every opportunity to make him feel better, but sometimes it did the opposite. Some weekends he would cuddle his dad, and receive a warm smile off him. Other weekends, the cuddle would bring about sadness in his face.

  He could sometimes see his dad's eyes watering and looking glassy, but his dad told him it was okay. He told Joseph that the reason why he felt teary was because he loved him so much, which didn't make sense to the seven-year-old.

  Chapter Two

  Carrying the shopping bags from the supermarket, Billy stumbled into his local shop that was situated a hundred yards away from his apartment. He plonked the four bags of shopping onto the floor of the empty store and smiled falsely at the shopkeeper standing behind the counter.

  "Well what do I owe this pleasure?" Ali snapped with a thin smile.

  "Forgot cigarettes," Billy sniffed. "How are you today, Ali?"

  "I'd be even better if you lot would stop going to that bloody supermarket. I've been in this country for twenty years, and for the first time, I'm thinking about giving it all up. My business is dying here!"

  "Sorry, Ali, but it's cheaper and I have to get by on the state."

  "Why did they have to build that bloody thing a mile away from here anyway, idiots!" Ali shook his fist up high at nobody in particular.

  Billy shrugged; he couldn't care less.

  Ali looked like he was constantly wound up and Billy worried that if he continued the way he did, a heart attack would be imminent for the middle-aged Iranian.

  Billy took the cigarettes that Ali handed him and gave him the correct money in change. "So how's Mrs..."

  "Zarindoost," Ali said with a smile. "Just call her Mrs. Ali. I don't expect you to remember our surname. After all, you've only been here for a few years."

  "Okay," Billy laughed at Ali's dry sarcasm. "Point taken. It's just that I haven't seen her in ages."

  "She's fine, we're still at it like rabbits." Ali winked. "Women eh, give them an inch and they fake a smile."

  Billy smiled; he could always rely on Ali to perk his day up. It was one of the main reasons why he visited his shop. It was good banter, and despite his over aggressiveness sometimes, he had a good sense of humour. He liked to mock his wife, but Billy was under the impression that if she could hear some of the things he said, he'd be in deep trouble. Ali was the local shopkeeper, and his wife was a History Lecturer at the local college. Their kids had grown up and moved down to London, to Ali's disappointment, and they had one other addition to the family: Ali Junior, or AJ. He was a late surprise addition to the family, and they worshipped the young boy.

  *****

  Billy trudged home with the shopping bags and passed a young man he had never seen before on the stairs as he headed for his apartment. The young man smiled thinly at Billy. Billy never responded and scrunched his face in confusion. This was the first time he had seen any response from one of his neighbours. All of his neighbours seem to be the same as him: Quiet, single, depressed, no job, living off benefits and spending most of their time mulling around their apartment, feeling sorry for themselves.

  His legs began to ache and tire as if they had been accidentally injected with a sedative, like something out of a comedy sketch. His body wasn't used to exercise and as he reached his door, he opened it and felt a little guilty that he didn't respond to the young man's timid salutation from before. He promised himself to greet the youngster with a hello next time, which was a big deal for the residents of the apartments as nobody conversed with one another, but Billy thought that it didn't hurt to have some manners.

  Chapter Three

  Saturday was Billy’s favourite day of the week.

  He woke up to the alarm on his phone, and sprung out of bed almost immediately as if his bed was wired up and had volts through it. It had given him a fright, and made him jump like a pet on bonfire night. He showered, shaved and put on fresh clothing. Billy felt his clean-shaven face; he had done a good job, and it was now smoother than a billiard ball. He sighed as he looked around his poky apartment. It felt like he was in prison; he desperately needed a job to swallow his days up.

  The difference between Billy and the rest, was that he did want to work, but his psyche was so fragile, he couldn't so much as stack a shelf before breaking down into fits of rage or fits of tears. He was too unstable; he knew that, and so did his doctor.

  With a spring in his step, he galloped down the stairs outside his apartment and walked out into the fresh air that caressed his face. It was a reasonable warm day for the month of March and Billy thought that he could get away with taking his son to the park. He hated the winter. The weather was cold, and would freeze up his joints like the Tin Man in Oz, and everything was damp, which meant every time he needed to take his son out, he would have to put his hand in his pocket. If his son wanted to go swimming, or soft-play or somewhere else, it would usually cost money. The park cost nothing, and Billy was pleased to see the arrival of spring.

  Since Billy couldn't afford a car, he took the short journey by bus and stepped off his destination. He looked up and an angry looking black cloud slowly swam its way across the blue sky, and the weak sun glowed lazily above him. The wind tormented his ear lobes and whispered wordless sounds in his ears, as he was now yards away from his required destination.

  "Don't you dare rain today," he grunted.

  He arrived at the front door of a house that he used to live in himself. For many months he had been arriving at the front door he was staring at, and it normally didn't bother him. But this day was proving difficult on how he and his life had declined over the last three years. This used to be his house. This used to be his life, and Lisa used to be his partner.

  Every time he saw that front door, his mind wandered back to what it was like when he was married to Lisa. She was his childhood sweetheart; he had never loved anyone else. He still loved her even now, but knew there was no chance of any reconciliation. He had messed things up good and proper.

  Nearly three years ago, Lisa's childhood sweetheart had turned into a violent monster, a drunk, a depressed individual who lost his job and became virtually unemployable and impossible to live with. She had to ask him to leave. Lisa was the love of his life, still was. She was beautiful now, but even more beautiful back then, before age crept towards her and childbirth did its best to scar her body.

  Back in the day, she was beautiful, younger, elegant and Billy was in love. Her hair was coffee colour, with a drop of milk. Her eyes lit up every time she looked at him, and he didn't know where to look when she did this. When he f
irst met her, her chocolate coloured eyes melted his heart and he remembered that red silky blouse that clung onto the shape of her modest breasts for dear life. At the time, he thought that she must have had a wardrobe of the same tops but in every colour imaginable, as every time he saw her she wore something that was silky.

  He could understand why Lisa had asked him to leave. He could understand why Lisa had decided to divorce him. It was for the benefit of their son, Joseph. Billy knew that kind of atmosphere wasn't healthy for a young boy, and needed no persuasion to leave. He thought at first it was temporary, but when he received a letter from Lisa's lawyer filing for divorce, he broke down in tears, even though deep down, as sure as taxes and as sure as a corrupted government, he knew it was going to happen anyway.

  A day later, he was found slumped in a park, drunk. He was arrested and put in a cell for the night. Never again.

  Billy took in a deep brave breath and knocked on the door, and he wasn't surprised to see thirty-six-year-old Peter Gregory opening the door, dressed in his usual sport attire. Peter smiled at Billy.

  "Joseph, your daddy's here," he said mockingly.

  Billy found it weird that he wasn't allowed to step into—what used to be—his own house since Peter arrived on the scene. As far as Billy was aware, Peter was Lisa's first relationship since their split. He didn't live there at the moment; they had only been seeing each other for two months. Some days, Billy would have fantasies about fighting Peter, but knew he would come out second best. A fight with fitness instructor Peter Gregory against a scruffy hard drinking Billy Jones, would be like watching a fight between George McFly and Biff Tannen.

  Billy could understand why he wasn't allowed to just walk in, but it still irked him that this younger man, this personal trainer who was now banging his wife and playing with his son, was standing by the door of a house he didn't own, preventing Billy from stepping inside.