Kimberly's Capital Punishment

by Richard Milward

  Yellowed school uniforms, and glaring at me.

  Milan beckoned. Before the match, I

  Remembered to buy the football top

  From JD Sports in Wood Green, but I

  Realised – once I got to the pub –

  I’d bought Internazionale instead of

  Dumpy Mr Friday’s dear beloved

  AC. He went absolutely ballistic,

  Yelling at me in front of his mates. I

  Made a quick getaway. I went for a

  Refund at JD, then power-walked back to

  South Tottenham. Suddenly, I was spasming.

  As per usual, it was only a

  Telephone call. Mr Saturday wanted to

  Undress me again and shag me

  Rotten in his rotten, pitch-

  Dark bedroom. Again, the blood in my knickers

  Added to the impression I was a whore, and I

  Yowled as he forced entry into

  My privates. Afterwards, I didn’t dare

  Report him to the police. Instead, I

  Staggered over to the old folk’s home, to

  Unwind with Mr Sunday and someone else’s

  Nan, but the pleasantries and tea-

  Drinking were ruined by the constant, nagging

  Assumption I’d contracted HIV or a

  Young child off the previous bastard.

  Get me to a nunnery!

  All this philanthropy was taking its toll on my health and safety. I wasn’t even sure if any of these men respected me – with some of them I felt more like a voodoo doll, letting them stick their pricks in me more as a means of them venting their anger and frustration, rather than them actually caring about me.

  The more saintly I was, the more my seven weekly lovers seemed tuned to the seven deadly sins: greedy, very-special-needy Mr Monday; envious failure Mr Tuesday; proud, pompous, Prosecco-quaffing Mr Wednesday; lusty, highly fertile Mr Thursday; gluttonous, basketball-shaped Mr Friday; wrathful ladybeater Mr Saturday; slothful, softly spoken Mr Sunday.

  A couple of the men (Mr Thursday, or good old Mr Sunday) seemed pleasant enough, but their good will was cancelled out by some of the other men’s bad willies. Men are hard work. As soon as you give them what they want, they get bored of you, or take liberties. I felt like a daft cow, making a bloody butterfly-painting in my knickers as I laid in bed that night with insomnia.

  It was one of many nights of loneliness and depression. All I had for company were the two morning-after pills swimming in my stomach, and the men’s eyes looking in at me from the top deck of the 243. It wasn’t just my private organs that killed – my whole chest ached, every time I thought of my weekly lovers. I had no idea how I was going to get rid of them. Of course, there was always the possibility I could make them all hang themselves on a climbing frame by being incessantly horrible to them, but I didn’t really want that.

  Rather than killing more boyfriends, I just wished I could bring back to life the one I’d had in the first place. Grabbing my stomach, I sighed at the empty room, then slipped out from under the gingham bedcovers. I felt like a drowsy centipede, practically crawling across the carpet, doubled over with abdominal pain. I scrabbled through my Medicine Bag for a fresh pack of Panadol, then stumbled into the unlit kitchen for a glass of water.

  I found the glass alright, draining casually on the worktop, but when it came to finding the water, my heart rate quickly quadrupled. The glass slipped from my hand, and clatter-shattered across the lino. I stared in disbelief at the horrors that lay before me on the marble-effect melamine.

  Although I’d been thinking about Stevie non-stop for the last few months, I’d forgotten all about Meaty Stevie and Fruity Stevie. Fruity Stevie looked half-dead under his glass mixing bowl: his arms and legs leaking purple banana-pus; his head oxidised to a crisp; and his torso half-eaten by mould. Meaty Stevie, on the other hand, looked very much alive, sitting upright on his magic carpet of clingfilm, with bright green chest hair, and maggoty teeth falling out of his mouth. Glaring at me through the dark, with his mad meatball eye, Meaty Stevie screamed, ‘Die! Die! Die!’

  All I could do was carry on staring, panic-stricken, as Meaty Stevie hauled the Tefal igloo off himself and crawled towards me along the plastic worktop. I felt the insides of my cheeks leak. Then, in a moment of inspiration, I leapt for the light switch. As soon as the bulb sprang to life, I saw Meaty Stevie was back on the clingfilm, under his glass mixing bowl, playing dead again. I swallowed back a gobful of saliva. I still didn’t trust the old pile of meat, so I gave him and Fruity Stevie an impromptu burial in the dustbin, tying up the binliner, then carrying them out into the hallway, playing Chopin’s Funeral March in my head.

  Back under the safety of my gingham bedcovers, I noticed the pain easing in my abdomen, although there was still a seven-way tug-of-war going on with my heartstrings. I hid my head under both pillows. My first experiment to reanimate Stevie had failed miserably, but I still wanted him back. I tried to instigate a makeshift seance in my head, to no avail.

  ‘Stevie, love, move amongst us, move amongst us,’ I whispered, feeling idiotic.

  I chewed my lip, still unable to sleep. I didn’t have the heart to split up with any of my weekly lovers (the lads were insecure enough as it was), and I didn’t want to dampen their love with cruelty, either (they were probably prone to suicide, too). But I had to get rid of them somehow.

  I stayed awake, until I came up with this solution: perhaps I could test their dedication to breaking point, by feigning mental illness and setting them a stupid task.

  The next morning, I parcelled up seven athletics bibs, seven pairs of Lycra shorts and seven bottles of peroxide, and posted them to my seven special men, with a note:

  HI. I’VE GOT PROBLEMS. IF YOU EVER WANT TO BE

  WITH ME AGAIN,

  DYE YOUR HAIR AND WEAR THESE.

  LOVE FROM KIMBERLY

  x x x x x x x

  The first half of the Tibetan Book of the Dead kept me on track to becoming a good-natured person, while the second half kept me on track to becoming a paranoid wreck. I refused to sleep too near to it, but always picked it up robotically first thing in the morning, for a gander.

  I had a good long stare at the tip of my tongue in the bathroom mirror, then went through and made a cup of Best-in. I still didn’t dare look at my anklebones.

  Once the coffee had reassembled the jumbled Lego blocks in my skull, I headed downstairs for a sip of fresh air before work. My legs felt stiff and heavy as I plodded down the steps, and it was frustrating having to do the trick with the door, which was also stiff and heavy. I stubbed my toe, yanking it towards myself a bit too aggressively once I’d got it open.

  Instead of grumbling, I decided to do something about the door, once and for all. I counted my pennies and headed down to the local builders’ merchant to buy a wood plane (£9.55 excl. VAT). I carried it back to the flat, then attacked the bottom of the front door, watching in awe as the spirals and curls of wood waterfalled onto the doorstep. At one point I got a bit carried away – like when I accidentally grate too much Parmesan on people’s pasta – and I had to stop myself from shredding the door completely.

  Soon enough, it was good and loose. No longer would me and my neighbours have to do the annoying trick with the door. I chucked the wood plane next to the pile of shoes in the hallway, then opened and closed and opened and closed and opened and closed the front door, smiling serenely. The hinges squeaked with gratitude.

  I waltzed/limped away from the flat, picking sawdust out of my fingernails. I was all set for a grand day in the Capital when, just then, a mammoth halal van pulled up alongside me, ready to drop off the morning’s corpses. The stench of dead flesh and disinfectant swept up my nostrils as they pulled open the back door, revealing fifteen or twenty hung, drawn and quartered cows. I gagged, quickening my pace.

  Now might be a good time to mention I’d turned vegetarian. After being tormented by Meaty Stevie the night before, I�
�d vowed never to put another dead body in my mouth. It was all well and good being nice to humans but, as religious folk might tell you, being nasty to any of God’s creatures probably won’t inspire St Peter to let you into Heaven.

  I power-walked away from the van, watching out for ants and ladybirds underfoot. Vegetarianism has endless benefits: it reduces the amount of bounties put on animals’ heads; improves your skin; saves you time umming and ahhing over menus; and I liked the idea of spring-cleaning my intestines with easily digestible plant matter and fresh fruit juices.

  I got to the Ristorante di Fantasia just before eleven. Paolo was gobbling a bit of breakfast – coffee, with open sarnies of speck and mozzarella – and my stomach turned over. I put my raincoat on the rail and washed the rest of the sawdust out from under my nails. While Paolo wasn’t watching, I wanted to swing open the refrigerators and let all the frozen carcasses run free, up the A10, away from the city. But I guessed it wouldn’t be good for business, so I went round adjusting and readjusting the cutlery instead.

  There’s something that happens around noon in the Capital called ‘lunchtime’, which we don’t have up North, and it causes people to come flocking to the Ristorante with howling stomachs. Before long, the place was quite packed, and I became suddenly hyperactive, busying myself with the orders rather than the feng shui of the soup spoons. For the first twenty minutes nobody ordered meat, but I knew the truce couldn’t last for ever.

  At about half past, a man with thick eyebrows and pretty Persian cheekbones sat down firmly at table 16, making the plastic flowers wobble. He was one of the more unadventurous men of the Ristorante: he always sat at 16, he always wore denim, and he even had a ‘usual’. This man’s usual was venison ravioli. I pretended to be busy, polishing the coffee cups in the kitchen, dreading going over for his order. In the end, I tried to distract him from his normal thought processes, pressing my Wonderbra against his left ear, but it didn’t sway him. I scribbled a reindeer on my notepad, with its eyes crossed out, and stalked sadly back through to the kitchen. I stood about, kicking my heels and looking glum, while I waited for Paolo to come out of the toilet with Norma Jean. He smiled at me sheepishly, red-faced, then gradually the smile turned into a straight line.

  ‘Well? What is order?’ he snapped.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell the truth. I picked at a loose thread on my blouse, and answered, ‘What’s the, er … veggie equivalent of venison again?’

  ‘There is no equillavent.’

  I looked at my feet, which were still jiggling underneath me.

  ‘Customer wants vegetarian ravioli? I can do this,’ Paolo said, though he didn’t look impressed.

  I nodded, coquettishly. Paolo sighed, then stormed off to get the meat substitute out of the back of the freezer.

  Twenty minutes later, a miserable-looking tofu ravioli was sitting on the counter, awaiting service. I carried it over to table 16, feeling twitchy but gallant enough, stroking the Persian bloke’s neck with my bosoms again, praying he didn’t have the heart (or the language) to make a complaint.

  Once I put his plate down, I scurried off to bother the other diners, though I couldn’t help catching his reflection in the freshly wiped windows. His eyes followed me round the tables – it was hard to tell if he was angry or not, with those thick, permanently knitted eyebrows.

  I couldn’t stand it any longer. I sent the next few orders through to Paolo, then made my way back to the Persian’s table, to ask if everything was alright. As I paced across the mosaics, I had a speech planned about animal rights, inhumane butchery, and how nice his denim was.

  As it turned out, though, he didn’t want to talk about the venison. What he wanted to talk about did have horns, mind you – but only the type of horn you keep in your trousers. With eyebrows still firmly knitted, Mr No Tomorrow – as he shall now be known – tugged my blouse sleeve towards him and, in hushed tones, said, ‘I hear you do intercourse for free?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Intercourse.’

  I nearly spat out my tongue. Despite being ashamed about saying ‘intercourse’ out loud, Mr No Tomorrow clearly wasn’t shy.

  ‘I wasn’t going to … eh … ask you about the you know,’ he went on, ‘but your things,’ pointing at my Wonderbra with his knife, ‘you are rubbing me for three weeks now. So I heard you are part-time prostitute?’

  I made a face. I wasn’t sure whether to be offended or not. Holding his gaze, I explained I wasn’t a part-time prostitute, as he so kindly put it – I just happened to be shagging quite a few different men at the minute, and they were giving me money for it.

  Mr No Tomorrow raised one of those eyebrows.

  ‘I’m desperate,’ he pleaded. The daft thing was he was physically very attractive – I just couldn’t go on recruiting lovers, though. It wasn’t my fault I was magnetic to the opposite sex, although I did consider not coming to work in the Wonderbra any more.

  Curiously, Mr No Tomorrow added, ‘I am not illegal citizen,’ which meant he probably was. He certainly had an accent like an illegal citizen.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I said instinctively. I bit my bottom lip (not provocatively). I didn’t want to embarrass Mr No Tomorrow by subjecting him to rejection by a ‘part-time prostitute’, and I did appreciate him not booting off about the tofu. I just didn’t have enough days in the week to satisfy him. And not enough peroxide, either. Poking my dimples out, I rapped my fingernails on the tabletop, wondering how to let the Persian sex pest down gently.

  And then it struck me. I knew someone who’d be absolutely perfect for him.

  My Promiscuous Pal Polly from Southampton came striding across the pub forecourt, holding on to her pink minidress to stop the wind licking her thighs. Her hair was done in a sort of blonde beehive, and she made hoof-prints in the dirt as she galloped forwards in her heels.

  She shrieked when she saw the bungee-jumping apparatus. I smiled at her, in a terrified manner.

  ‘New hair?’ I asked, trying to be feminine.

  ‘Aw, yeah, yeah,’ she replied, patting the beehive, also trying to be feminine.

  The cumulus clouds had begun to spit, so me, Mr Sunday and Mr No Tomorrow were huddled with our drinks, under the brick canopy of the pub. It turned out Mr No Tomorrow was adventurous, after all – a sadist, in fact – and he’d arranged for us to do a dual bungee-jump off a crane in Wood Green, just to ‘break ice’.

  I was more bothered about ‘breaking neck’.

  ‘Everyone’ll see up my skirt,’ Polly remarked, gesturing at the empty car park.

  Mr No Tomorrow laughed, because he fancied her. I was glad. I wished he knew he didn’t have to go through all this bungee ice-breaking to coax Polly into bed, but he’d already paid for the jump and we didn’t want to disappoint.

  Once we’d polished off our drinks, the four of us went up in this creaking, yellow lift with SMITH FAIRYTALE FUNLAND plastered on the side. I’d purposefully been nursing my Smirnoff, despite Mr No Tomorrow snapping ‘Drink up’ every thirty seconds.

  I was so nervous, I could’ve fired lightning from my fingertips. It felt like a dress rehearsal for the afterlife; like we were ascending to Heaven, only to be turned down by the gatekeeper and sent plummeting to a hellish red end on the car-park concrete. I had pangs of vertigo – that perilous, sickly feeling you’re going to fall from a great, stupid height, and the worst thing about it was I was actually willingly going to throw myself from a great, stupid height. The brain malfunctions, spewing all sorts of confused signals round your system, trying to eject itself from your skull.

  I clutched Mr Sunday’s hand, like it could somehow counteract the cogs of the lift. He glanced at me, shivering in the crisp, white athletics kit and shaking his crisp, white hairdo. I smiled back at him, but it was a wobbly smile. Me and Mr Sunday had been getting on well – he knew a lot about women (since he spent most of his free time with gangs of old ones), and he’d come out of his shell more since those first terse exch
anges in the Ristorante di Fantasia. He was a professional carer, and that’s what set him apart from the other barbarians: he seemed to have evolved a bit further. Life, for many men, is just about stuffing food and drink into their mouths, and stuffing their penises into females. Mr Sunday, on the other hand, looked after ladies for a living, and I imagined he’d look after me too, should we grow old together.

  ‘I only came out for a quiet pint,’ he mumbled, staring at the Capital expanding beneath us. Polly giggled, keeping her thighs tight together. There was a bit of a crowd forming, after all.

  Polly and Mr No Tomorrow were the first to jump that afternoon – they’d hardly even said ‘Hello’ to each other before they were bound together with a rubber band and chucked off the top of the crane. My guts unravelled as I watched them turn to screaming specks then screaming humans again then specks again then humans again then specks then humans then specks humans specks humans specks humans specks.

  I wondered why some people get a thrill off terrifying near-death experiences, such as rollercoasters and GHB abuse. Humans are odd and foolish in that way. Even people who manage to stay calm during air travel are mad as well, putting all their faith in these gigantic, metal bird-machines that don’t even flap their wings. Humans were not made for the sky.

  I gulped and looked down at Polly and Mr No Tomorrow being released from the elastic band. They seemed to be in one piece, though it was hard to tell from so high up. I glanced again at Mr Sunday, and we squeezed each other’s hands tighter, forming a sweaty lagoon between them. We watched with white faces as the wobbly wire was winched back up the crane, while the gypsy instructor explained how to have a happy fall. I paid close attention.

  We had to look into the distance, before dropping off the crane. The clouds looked grey, miserable and sorry for us. I kept whining, ‘I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can do it.’ In contrast, Mr Sunday was trying to come across as calm and collected, especially in front of the instructor, who didn’t seem at all fazed by heights, let alone throwing himself off them.