Kimberly's Capital Punishment

by Richard Milward

  I don’t know if it was the lemon shots or just the sight of more booze, but Donald began acting like a child when we got inside the off-licence. I tried not to act like his mother, watching him load a basket greedily with packs of Polish Warzone lager, and a 35cl bottle of Glen’s, the ‘exciting vodka’. Donald certainly looked excited as he hauled them over to the counter. I decided to push the boat out, and bought myself four 6% Babychams, instead of my usual 5.5% Smirnoff Ices.

  After the off-licence, Donald led me down to Lawrence Road, stopping now and again to inspect specks on the pavement. Just past the gypsy car park, we came to this battered, battleship-grey unit, which was home to creeping weeds, creaking stairwells, and an overabundance of cotton reels – and it was Donald’s home, too. Lo and behold, Donald had a roof after all. He squatted on floor six, in a spacious, open-plan dwelling, with no mod cons or floorboards. My brain squealed as we manoeuvred up the stairs, past wet newspapers with toadstools erupting out of the centre pages, and many empty Warzone cans. Donald had already polished off his first one before we’d even made it to the first-floor landing.

  ‘This rich lot are squatting on, er, third,’ he explained as we creaked our way up the steps. ‘What do you call the cunts? Artists.’

  I was exhausted by the time we got to the sixth floor, especially after lugging the Babycham about. Donald kicked open his front door and told me to make myself comfortable, with no hint of irony. The door looked like it needed a deworming tablet, but I didn’t have any in my Medicine Bag. I let out a violent cough. My lungs felt suddenly tight, like they’d also sprouted mushrooms.

  Donald’s lodgings were filled with the skeletons of sewing machines and the smell of waterlogged underlay, which had been stripped away from the wood beams and rolled into a corner. Donald kicked a few rusty sleeping bags to one side, then pointed at something for me to sit down on. It looked like a sofa.

  ‘It’s new, that is,’ he stated. I strained a smile, gingerly lowering myself down onto the sofa arm.

  To my right, I noticed a seven-piece tea service, perfectly arranged on a scratched silver platter. It looked like half-decent china, like a selection of misshapes from the Royal Albert factory, patterned with trilliums and trimmed in gold round the rims. Only a few bits were cracked.

  ‘Do you have many people round for tea?’ I asked, not sure if I was trying to be funny.

  ‘No, no. They’re all dead,’ Donald replied matter-of-factly. And he left it at that.

  A shiver went through me. I uncapped the Babycham and glanced about the room with slitted eyelids, like someone watching a horror film through their fingers. I was worried the place might give me bronchitis, or send me into anaphylactic shock. I surreptitiously took a slurp of Benylin before getting stuck into the sparkling perry. As we sat there in silence – and in darkness – I wanted to ask Donald if he was alright, but I didn’t want him to think we were on an awkward first date.

  In the end, I said nothing. Before long, Donald had found some candles, but they were difficult to light in such dank conditions. When they finally ignited, the next thing I noticed was the shitting-and-pissing bucket in the far corner, then all the white tablets strewn about underfoot. They didn’t look like anything I had in the Medicine Bag – some were embossed with a Nike swoosh while others were light green, with ‘Shrek II’ stamped on.

  ‘What are they?’ I asked, with pill-envy.

  Donald wiped his lips and muttered, ‘Ecstasy, they reckon.’

  I tried to look disappointed, but I wasn’t sure how visible my facial expressions were in the half-light. Donald squinted back at me blankly.

  ‘So, like, when you say, er, “Hello, my name is Donald, blah blah, I’m not on drugs, I don’t drink,” it’s all just a … a fib?’ I asked, choosing the more friendly ‘fib’ over ‘lie’, so I wouldn’t end up with my decapitated head in the shitting-and-pissing bucket.

  ‘I’m not on drugs,’ Donald snapped back. ‘I’ve got a rat problem.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I got given these pills from a friend,’ Donald explained, ‘but I don’t take it. I don’t touch them. They’re all cut with rat poison, are they not? And I’ve got a rat problem.’

  In the dim light, it was hard to tell if Donald was joking or not. On the upside, I couldn’t see any rats. I took another glug of sweet perry and turned my attention back to his sleeping quarters. Next to a bug-bitten mattress there were a few old photographs of a handsome footballer in red, and I kept glancing at Donald, then the footballer, then Donald, then the footballer.

  ‘Is that you?’ I asked.

  Donald coughed a bit of Warzone back into the black can.

  ‘Eh? No, no! It’s George Best, that ish,’ he slurred. ‘A fine footballer; fine, fine man …’

  I blushed, scratching my wrists. I wished I’d paid more attention to Stevie’s dull football chatter. I imagined him glaring down at me from the clouds, and tutting – for all sorts of different reasons.

  For a few uncomfortable minutes, me and Donald sat in silence again while I thought up a better question. I was torn between one about the weather, or one about his tea-set, or one about his white snakeskin loafer. In the end, though, I plumped for: ‘So, what were you, then, if you weren’t a footballer? Jobs-wise?’

  Donald cackled, with a twinkle in his eye. The cackle turned into a cough, before he finally composed himself and answered, ‘I was a gravedigger.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ I said, smiling, using the vocabulary of tramps. I don’t usually swear, if you haven’t already fucking noticed – I was just getting drunk. I took another long slug of Babycham, then asked, ‘How was it?’

  ‘Oh. Dead muddy,’ Donald said with a smirk, starting on his third Warzone. ‘It was alright, but it makes you think, doesn’t it. You know what I mean? It made me think. Like, I mean, everyone’s going to die, aren’t they?’

  Suddenly, Donald was speaking my language. I could keep myself occupied for hours, contemplating my own death. Hugging the perry bottle, I asked him, ‘So, what do you think happens when you die?’

  ‘What? What do you mean? As in rot?’

  ‘Naw, I mean … the afterlife … or whatever you think.’

  Donald pondered that one for a while, taking mouthful after mouthful of lager, before replying, ‘Christ. Well, no one knows for sure, do they. That’s the only, er … that’s the only thing they know for sure, isn’t it. I mean, I’ve seen tons of dead bodies – rotten ones – but, like, they’re all lifeless … but they keep their character. Like, the, the soul’s still there … and other bits and pieces.’

  For some reason, Donald laughed again. No doubt he was mortalled. To be polite, I nodded along with him, but I decided not to mention Stevie.

  ‘But, see, tons of folk believe in the, some sort of, er, afterlife,’ Donald went on, ‘and these are fellas – you know, the Aztecs, Mexicans, Buddhas, Egypt, er, the Norwegians, and all them fuckers – they never could’ve shared notes … so there’s something in it … there could be something in it … afterlife, and all that … they never could’ve shared notes … but how would they know?’

  I sipped more drink while Donald got more and more excitable. Veins strained through his forehead as he launched into another rant: ‘Unless it’s all a fucking ploy … unless some cunt invented Heaven and all that, just to make everyone behave themselves on Earth … naw, but death though … everyone’s too scared about it … everyone’s too scared about living, cos they’re too scared about dying … and, like, it’s just natural, it’s just natural. Death’s just … it’s just as natural as living, except just without all the talking and the arguing and the hassle … all that fucking hassle … fuck death … fuck it …’

  Donald was beginning to lose me. I shifted uneasily on the sofa arm.

  Once he settled down, Donald went to sit on the edge of one of the knackered sewing machines. He turned his head, to have a discreet burp, then he went on, ‘Well, anyway, go on … what do you want to
happen when you die?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said to my chest. ‘That’s the worst thing about it, like: the unknown.’

  I shuddered, to illustrate the point. Then I added, ‘I just hope … it works out alright. For everyone.’

  ‘Fuck everyone,’ Donald gurgled, gradually beginning to gyrate as he perched on the old Brother machine. ‘Don’t worry about it … I fuck death up the arse, me! I fuck it right up the arse!’

  I gulped, not so sure me and Donald were on the same page any more. Soon, Donald was thrusting his pelvis round the room; laughing; describing in great detail what he was going to do to death, should he get his hands on it. I strained a smile, sitting with my hands in my lap. I didn’t know where to look.

  After almost a minute of eye-watering crotch-rotation, I think Donald cottoned on I was feeling uncomfortable, and he slumped back down on the sewing machine. He panted, ‘I’m sure you’ll be alright, petal … you’ll get to Heaven … been an angel tonight … getting me the drink … I mean, like, so long as you haven’t been a complete bastard, or killed anyone, you’ll go straight there … straight to Heaven. That’s my reckoning …’

  The more Donald talked, the smaller my heart shrank. And my face sank. I felt instantly miserable, finishing off the last drops of flat perry. I decided it was time to leave.

  As I rose from the sofa, my shoulders felt heavy, like I was carrying the whole weight of Stevie’s coffin on my back. I realised then I had little chance of a happy afterlife. I was a complete bastard and a boyfriend-killer, and I was going to Hell.

  On my way out, I dithered a bit, unsure how to say goodbye to Donald. However, by then his eyes looked like penny-slits, so I just patted him gently on the shoulder and left the last bottle of Babycham by his side. Donald held my hand, coughed violently and mumbled, ‘I’ll treasure it, I’ll treasure it … we’ll have it another time … don’t go … cheerio … angel … angel … I’ll treasure it …’

  I felt like a devil, though, leaving Donald to doze on the mouldy machine. Tiptoeing from beam to beam, I covered my mouth, spotting the odd beady rat’s eye peeking at me from the shadows. I kicked one of the Nike pills towards them, then marched off, back down the corridor. I thought about taking the lift, but it smelled like a latrine, and the mechanisms looked life-threatening. So, I took the stairs instead:

  I

  AM

  NOT

  THAT

  HAPPY

  TAKING

  RICKETY

  HORRIBLE

  ELEVATORS

  Back out on Lawrence Road, it was a relief to fill my lungs with fresh air again. I glanced up at Donald’s dark windows, and shuddered. I thoroughly wet-wiped my fingers, then walked onwards, away from the gloom. It was high time for some more random acts of kindness, I thought. Either that, or some sort of transcendental religious salvation, before it was too late.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to the fellow in the Foyles T-shirt, ‘can you point me towards your DEATH section, please?’

  He raised an eyebrow and laughed. I tried to smile reassuringly, with extra dimples. I’d already spent twenty minutes in the shop, searching for a book about Mexican attitudes to death (which are meant to be dead positive, full of celebrations, dancing and skull-shaped sweeties), but I could only find books on how to cook burritos.

  ‘What exactly are you after?’ the Foyles fellow asked. His skull was disproportionately large compared to the rest of his body, probably to accommodate all the long words he’d accrued in his lifetime.

  ‘Er,’ I said, ‘something like … the afterlife. Like, The Road to the Good Afterlife, but I dunno if that’s a book. Like, like, How to Be Good and Not Go to Hell … except I’m not into the Christian side of it. I’m not after the Bible or anything.’

  We laughed together, although I wasn’t joking. The Foyles fellow must’ve thought I was weird but, in a city populated by ten million people, you can rest assured you’re never the single maddest person in any one square mile. For example, out of the bookshop window I could see a woman wheeling a baguette in a buggy, instead of a baby. I could also see a mentally ill deaf person making sign language to himself – unless it was just an actor from the Phoenix Theatre, practising jazz hands.

  After much exaggerated ‘flirty’ chin-stroking, my Foyles friend finally had a brainwave. Smiling blissfully at his mammoth intelligence, the boy led me to the Eastern Philosophy section, and pointed out something called the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The publishers had spent a lot of money making the cover emanate metallic red, giving it the quality of a very holy tome. I flicked through it, marvelling at all the ancient poetry and jazzy drawings of cheery, chubby Buddhas, as well as other ones with fangs, breathing fire. I respected a religion that employed psychedelic artists to paint their death scenes.

  In a way, I didn’t feel so frightened about snuffing it any more. Each page of the book was peppered with words like ‘inspiration’ and ‘enlightenment’ and ‘peace’ and ‘bliss’. By the looks of it, the only distressing word in the book was the price tag (£12.99!), but I bought it anyway. I wasn’t intending on going home and shaving my head and putting on a tangerine nappy, but I felt noticeably more content as I waltzed back out onto Charing Cross Road, with the book swinging by my side like a lucky charm. I was ready to fuck death up the arse, me!

  There was even a section of the book entitled ‘Natural Liberation of Fear through the Ritual Deception of Death’, which sounded right up my street. I wondered if I could deceive death completely, and live for ever. After what I’d done to Stevie, I was resigned to the fact I was probably destined for Hell, but there was always a chance I could rebalance my karma, if only I could hold death off long enough. I unzipped my Medicine Bag, and took out three multivitamin tablets. With my mouth overflowing with chemical orange fizz, I snuck into Soho Square and sat down in the lotus position, on the grass.

  The sun slowly craned its neck over a cloud, then over my shoulder, reading the text with me. Its rays were so bright, the pages became fluorescent. Squinting, I swung my eyes from left to right to left to right, skim-reading. A lot of the Buddhist terminology – like most religious terminology – went over my head: at first it seemed the only way to ‘avert death’ was to get this god Mahākarunika to do it for you. But I persevered, letting the text march into my brain like a band of disoriented Hare Krishnas.

  It was a funny old read. There was a whole section devoted to recognising the signs of ‘remote death’, ‘near death’ and ‘extremely near death’ and, as my eyes hoovered up the text, my heart began to droop. All the weird demons, wolfheads and three-eyed wrathful deities from picture 9 marched into my brain, hot on the heels of the Hare Krishnas.

  There should’ve been a warning on the front: NOT SUITABLE FOR HYPOCHONDRIACS. I never realised there were so many signs to let you know you’re on your way out. Rather than being sent on a ‘blissful journey towards a high state of being’ – like the blurb reckoned – I sat there quaking in the middle of the square, more afraid of death than ever before.

  Some of the signs of impending death were strange (like not making a sound when you snap your fingers, or not being able to see the tip of your own tongue), and some of the rituals to avert them were even weirder. For instance, should you have protruding anklebones, the only way to save yourself from dying within the month is to attach a dog’s tail between your legs, defecate in a pile and eat three mouthfuls of it. The book was barking mad.

  Out of curiosity, I snapped my fingers. Despite the noisy traffic, I definitely heard something click.

  Then, I stuck my tongue out. Boys have often complimented me on the length of my tongue – I caught a glimpse of it too; no bother.

  I turned the page, feeling a little better. But I didn’t dare look at my anklebones.

  It was my day off the following Wednesday. Coincidentally, it was my seven fancy men’s day off as well, and they all wanted to see me. I didn’t want to be nasty and blow any of them off, so I spen
t the day desperately rushing from date to date to date to date to date to date to date. Like so:

  Mongoloid Mr Monday met me

  Round the 7.30 a.m. mark on

  Markfield recreation ground and, completely

  Out of the blue, said he

  Needed squeezing again. But not like that

  Day I squeezed him by Tower Bridge.

  Against all the odds, he

  Yanked out his elastic penis and

  Made me squeeze that instead. I grimaced,

  Relieving him in his trackie bottoms, listening

  To the daysnoring growing gradually heavier,

  Until it was time to meet Mr Tuesday at the

  Employment agency. I felt bad now for

  Smashing his violin. He seemed even more

  Depressed, and his eyes were even bluer

  As he perused the job vacancies. Bogies

  Yo-yoed out of his nose, while he

  Moaned about missing Maria, and I wasn’t

  Really attracted to him any more.

  When I met Mr Wednesday – dressed in an

  Emporio Armani vest and slacks – I

  Didn’t expect him to stuff a fifty-pound

  Note in my bra and drag me into the

  Empty gents at Searcy’s, demanding rough

  Sex, and one of his thumbs up my

  Dirt-pipe. I held back the tears through dinner.

  At least I had more money for Donald,

  Yet I felt like a manky old prostitute.

  My bum-hole was a red-

  Raw bullet-hole and, when I found Mr

  Thursday lingering outside his

  High-rise home, my fresh-on daisy

  Underwear felt itchy with blood. A

  Rushed cappuccino round the corner didn’t

  Serve to clear my head, and I

  Ducked out of going upstairs with him, on

  Account of his daughters turning up in