BLOOD
DRUGS
TEA
by
Craig Saunders
Copyright © 2011 Craig Saunders
All characters in this novel are fictitious and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover or format other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchase.
2nd Edition 2016
Cover Art Copyright © 2016 Craig Saunders
1st Edition published as 'The Gold Ring'
CONTENTS
Prem
Sunday
1. Jitters
2. Nudity
3. The Fisherman Interloper
4. Douche
5. The Painters
6. Locked out
7. Spare Key
Monday
8. Taking the Phone off the Hook
9. The Dork
10. Buns
Tuesday
11. Girl Action
12. Tie me up
13. Slapper
Wednesday
14. A Pint of Wife Beater
15. Sedition
16. Girl-on-girl Action
17. Bareback Bloodsports
18. Nocturnal Emissions
Thursday
19. Foreplay
20. Muse
21. Stirrups
22. Home and Wet
23. Pub grub
Friday
24. Trip to the Clinic in the Morning
25. Faith (Not the kind with big boobs)
26. STD
27. Be Still My Beating Headboard
A Week Saturday: Apres Prem
About the Author
Author’s note
Also by Craig Saunders
Of all the faculties, I think memory is my least favourite.
Prem
Bear with me if I ramble somewhat. I want to finish this before I die. It’s my first and last draft. I can’t go back. This story takes place now, but it's probably later, when you are.
Sometimes, I tape myself sleeping. The tapes are interesting, but I only get one third of the day free. I watch every tape. I don’t know why I do this, but I’m certain I will. I tell you this because I understand you need something to relate to here. Something familiar to plant your feet in as you read, so you don’t fly off at the handle. Or become a public enemy. The Government doesn’t allow people with groundless feet to read. It’s subversive.
Five was always a good number. There are five of us at the beginning of the story. There are fewer of us at the end, though, so it didn’t take too long to write.
This is the part where the narrator says ‘the names have been changed to protect the innocent’. Ordinarily. Instead, I’m going to say ‘the names have been shortened to save me from carpal tunnel syndrome.’
I had tunnel vision before. I can’t for the life of me figure out how your carpals get tunnelled. They’re in a tunnel already. It’s called the wrist.
I have trouble sleeping. Sometimes it makes me angry. I’m using the generic ‘it’ here. I don’t know what makes me angry, just as I don’t know what it is that stops me from sleeping. I’m fairly sure ‘it’ can be applied to the cause. It can be applied to anything. Not as a salve, though. I tried that before and I bled for days. ‘You shouldn’t try surgery on yourself,’ I said. I thought I was an arsehole and didn’t listen. Turns out I was wrong.
First impressions are rarely right.
*
Sunday
1. Jitters
I sat in front of the computer that first night. It was past three in the morning. The insistent glare from the screen made my eyes sore.
I used to get up in the night and look in the mirror at myself. My eyes were red and shiny. The filmy surface always tightened, trying to pull my eyes shut. I wouldn’t let it, though. When you go to sleep the film hardens and turns into eye snot. If you don’t let your eyes close the film isn’t allowed to force your eyes shut. Stay awake for long enough, eventually it crusts over the surface and keeps out the dust. I once wondered if I stayed awake for a month, maybe, could I make a mould of my eyes? I waited three days. The crust dried and I blinked. My work was lost. The not-blinking is the hardest part. Staying awake is easy.
I’ve been awake for every minute of various days. I wonder if other people have seen all times, or if without fail for the whole of their lives they miss 4.33am. I think they should have extra time for those of us who need it.
I’m waiting for an image of a girl to download.
I’ve seen much the same position before but I still come back for more. I’ve got her head and a bulging cheek so far. I started the download at 3.20 am. It’s now 3.72am. Or it should be. Perhaps I should shut down one of the other five movies I’m trying to download. Maybe that will make it go faster. I refuse on general principle though. If, with my pathetic, organic mush processor I can manage to do five things at once, I don’t see why the computer’s processor can’t manage it. I know it’s the connection. That’s no excuse.
I know I’m just going to watch them and then feel guilty about having porn on the computer. Sometimes I reformat my whole hard drive and hope the evidence will go away.
I blink and break the film and start again.
*
Time works differently for some people. Some people are called folk. Some folk are evil.
Time and evil seem linked there, but I don’t think they are.
Time for me is a soapy bubble. I’m stuck in it. The bubble changes shape, depending where I push. I can see the other people on the outside.
*
I got bored of waiting and cut the connection. It was a fateful decision. I should have let it run. At least I would have had some decent porn to peruse. As I cut the connection the phone rang. I got up to answer it, leaving the study and going into the front room. I walked in slippered feet, quiet on the carpet. The phone gained more insistency and I picked it up. I didn’t think it was unusual to get a phone call past three in the morning. I looked at the mantelpiece. It was three thirty, near enough.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” replied Reb. “You got your shoes on?”
Why he thought I’d have my shoes on at three thirty in the morning, I couldn’t say.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I found something. Something interesting. You should take a look.”
“What is it?”
“A body. Pretty fresh by the smell of it.”
“Really? Where?”
“Carter Street. I just found it.”
“Tell me about it then.”
“You should really see for yourself. More impact that way.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said and hung up. There was no point in hanging around. Time is often short, but for Reb it's a mirror. He sees only what’s behind it. He’s dysfunctional in the extreme. His name’s not even Reb, it’s Rob, but he hasn’t the moral fibre to fight it. All he wants is to be left alone and given some recognition. He goes out all the time. I know he doesn’t talk to many people. He walks a lot.
My story should start somewhere. I don’t think it’s here though.
*
Here. Here is where I am going to start the story. But first, an explanation. I’ve read A Brief History of Time (OK, half o
f it) and I know all about the universe. But I reckon Stephen Hawkins is wrong. I don’t think there was a big bang at all. I think at the start of the universe, there was this big spinning top, and the universe fell off it. Ever since, things have been spinning away; atoms, galaxies, people.
Things spin, apparently, because of the Coriolis effect, named for some not-very-famous Frenchman, Gustave someone or other. You can look it up if you want. Although Gustave doesn’t sound very French to me. I reckon it’s because of the big spinning top, though.
Anyway, gravity holds us down, magnetism pulls us in, and things spin. It doesn’t explain why people revolve around each other, but save your time. The unifying theory of everything is: things spin. At least, that’s the way I figure it.
So it begins. I begin.
With a circle.
*
2. Nudity
I suppose I should introduce myself first. My name’s Jake. It’s short for John. Not really short for, I suppose. My second name is Black.
You’re right. It’s a good strong name.
The call from Reb got me going. I walked at a brisk pace under a cold moon. The walk didn’t take long and nothing happened apart from the crack of my boots on the pavement and my breath frosting the air.
When I arrived on Carter Street, there was a girl. She’d beaten me to it. No one else was around. I took in the scene and looked shiftily up and down the street for anyone watching. No one was. Reb was right. There was more impact seeing it for myself. I was slightly shocked. But then I don’t get all emotional about a little death. I could handle it. That’s what I told myself anyway, as I got into a crouch beside her.
I took in the scene. A young girl. She was obviously dead. There was something glittering in the moonlight beside her.
I leaned over her and picked it up. It was gold and looked like and was a wedding band. Inside it said ‘Evermore my Love’. I guessed it was Robert Plant’s.
The ring itself was just a plain band of gold. It tapered round in soft edges. D-shaped, I think it’s called.
I heard of a man once. His ring caught on the spike of a fence and pulled his finger from his hand. Ever since I gave rings a healthily wide birth. I need my fingers. I guess if I had to pick one to lose it would be the right thumb. I rarely use it so I think it would be the easiest to part with.
Ask people which they would rather lose and they always say ‘my little finger’. Ever try typing without a little finger?
The Yakuza cut of the little finger of their left hand when they cock up. It all spirals from there. The left little finger is the most important in Japanese sword fighting. They lose their little finger, the grip becomes weaker; they cock up again. They lose another finger. I’m guessing after the first cock up, their success ratio plummets like a seagull on a fishing trip.
Humans are stupid. They create a rod for their own back. Then they die because they can’t duck.
*
Next to the ring was the body. It lay prostrate on cold concrete outside a barren and abandoned three-story brown brick house with rheumy windows on one side and a multi-story car park on the other. It was the back alley behind the mall. The mall itself was dilapidated and only sported old duff shops, the kind only pikeys shop at.
I looked closely at the body while I squatted. She was a small woman, must only weigh six or seven stone. Her head was slightly misshapen, but it was otherwise the corpse (I changed it from body when I saw it still had a head. It seems wrong to called a corpse a body and forget the head) of a beautiful girl. There was surprisingly little blood.
It’s actually easy to tell the age of a person when they are serenely dead. Conversely, it’s next to impossible for me to tell the age of the violent dead. I guessed she was in her twenties. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Couldn’t tell what she'd died from, but a trickle of blood from the ears and her egg-shaped head gave it away.
She wasn’t wearing anything spectacular. I could go into details, and tell you every aspect. I could tell you all the juice – but I’d just be repeating myself later.
A single fingerprint stood out on the pale cheek (it was a cold night).
I pocketed the ring and wiped the fingerprint away.
*
I left her to lay there in the cold, lonely and glowing in the dark. She stood out. I didn’t think it would be long until someone found her. I didn’t want them to find me with her. That would have looked bad.
I turned off Carter Street and onto Baylorne. From there I walked up Hall Street, for five minutes. The cold wind pulled at my ears. My jaw ached.
Frost was making Artex patterns on car windows down the street, each parked haphazardly wherever they would fit on the street, some bumper to bumper. City cars must keep warmer than country cars. Made me long for company. Not much though. I think some company isn’t always worth the payback.
The sodium arc lights – either that or halogen, I’m never sure which – lit the street just for me. You know the lights I mean, orange ones, with an otherworldly glow. There’s a couple on every street, not playing for the team, blinking, buzzing, glowing red. The outcasts. The sounds were more alien than the sights…it didn’t really carry the scene though as I’m sure other worlds don’t have twenty clapped out Ford Fiesta’s parallel parked. The cars on the street were old – you can always tell how well-to-do a street is by the state of the outsides and their cars. Some of the houses were nicely decorated. Some of the people obviously took pride in the four square feet of front lawn they’d been allocated. None had thought ‘hey, is this our lot?’ and got shirty about it. They did what the rest of the population did – got on with it. You haven’t got time for some serious complaining when you’re poor. You need to be middle class to find the time to empathise with the lot of the working masses.
I thought about the girl as I walked. She’d wound up in a strange position. The misshapen head lent weight to the thought that it had been a violent death, but the legs had been arranged neatly. It seemed strange that her legs had lain straight and true, but the head had been warped. I thought this as I walked up the street. There was nothing to distract my thoughts. I walked the street a thousand times and more. I know the sights and sounds by heart, and the rhythm of the night is not unusual for me.
I lived just up the street.
*
I’m not morbid or anything, I wouldn’t want you to think that, I’m just trying my hardest to find interesting hobbies for poor people. I’m not destitute, I just can’t afford to spend all my time shopping, or going to the pictures, or drinking in a pub like other people. My one big work, my opus magnus, has already been and gone. My laurels might be a bit thin to be resting on, but I figure if I keep myself lean they’ll stand up to it.
The seaside’s not too far away. I moved here, where a couple of streets separate me from the cold. I hate the cold, which makes me wonder, continually, why I elected for the coast.
I’m a fair way away from Bridgend real, out in the sticks, where it’s nice and quiet and I don’t have to put up with the divs coming back from pubs or clubs hurling or burning up or running around on the streets having gum races and telling everyone they love them. Better than a few years ago before everyone got into pills, though. I remember the football years, fuckwit hooligans running around smashing everything, lacking the imagination to do something constructive or just shut up and keep out of everyone’s way. Same class of fuckwit nowadays, but at least the opiate’s changed, I guess.
I passed Reb’s house on the left. He lives on Hall Street, too. It was slightly odd that he hadn’t turned up. I’d expected him to meet me at the scene.
His lights were out (he’s got the top floor, sharing with a mature student called Vic who keeps a cat and is too gaunt for any decent man’s standards).
Reb’s lived here ever since I moved here – five years ago, from Bournemouth. He tried to chat me up in a club back then, and I was just so flattered I agreed to have coffee with him. Probably n
either move was the best I’ve ever made, but I’m stuck with it now. I’ve long since passed the age of second-guessing.
Reb knows I’m not gay but that doesn’t stop him trying. The occasional close call aside he’s not a bad person. He tried to kiss me once but I managed to turn my head away at the last minute. Not that he’s an unattractive man, but it’s just not my thing.
Anyway, I don’t think anyone can be a bad person and hate football. Bridgend United aren’t really a football team, so there’s so much shit that people get in other towns that we miss here. It’s not a bad thing.
I hate football. You might have guessed.
There are tons of nice places to live in town, but none of my friends live in them. It’s not surprising. If you don’t fit you have to exploit any niche that doesn’t spit you out again. I’m sure there are a few misfits out there doing alright for themselves. It just happens I don’t know any, that’s all.
I wiped the fingerprint away because I knew whose it was. Reb’s slightly dysfunctional, you see. Aren’t we all? He’s a man who needs a lot of love. Which is probably never going to happen, as me and my friends are the only real people he knows. I found the body because Reb found the body. I don’t know why he left the ring there this time. Usually it’s just a fingerprint.
Sometimes I’ve been too slow in getting to the scene and I’ve seen it, the police cordon and the fingerprint. Most of the time I don’t know where the fingerprint is, and I can’t do anything about it, but this time I could see it. She had pale skin. Skin like porcelain, and blood.
BLOOD DRUGS TEA (A Dark Comedy Novel) Page 1
