by Jay Stringer
We all lay there, feeling like women and men, swigging from our bottles. Darkness started to fall, and we knew soon it would be over; soon we would be back to what we were before the summer.
It was Bobby Buddha’s idea. At least, that’s the way I’ve always remembered it.
We were lay in the grass watching the sun disappear into a brilliant smog haze, when Bobby said,
‘We should light it.’
He pulled a lighter from his pocket, left over from our smoking career, and stared at the haunted house with the glassy eyes and solemn determination we would all come to recognise when we spent more time in bars.
Everybody stared silently at the house, vanishing beneath the night sky. Somewhere between the alcohol and our racing hormones, we knew he was right.
This was it. My moment. I would never be scared of anything again. The whole summer spread out behind me as I saw it clearly. It had all been building to this.
I became aware that everyone was looking at me, I was stood with my hand out for the lighter.
Bobby handed it over, and I smiled as I saw the way Kelly was looking at me. She’d never looked at me that way before. She’d never looked at Keano that way.
I strode across the field. Taking my time. I felt no fear as I pushed open the gate, not caring if the old man heard or not. Why would I care? He was a vampire.
I pulled myself up over the fence, and dropped down into the back garden. It was a nice garden, well kept, trimmed and mowed. As the shadows of the evening crept across the lawn, so did I. The back door wasn’t locked. I’d known, somehow, that it wouldn’t be. I eased it open and stood just inside the doorway long enough to look into the mirror for a moment, scanning my own reflection. Not seeing a drunk, not seeing a boy, seeing a man.
I climbed the steps carefully, and stopped to listen at the doorway to the living room, no sounds, no signs of life. I pushed the door open an inch, then another, but the old man wasn’t in the room. There were pictures on the walls, old faded photographs, newer colour ones. Stacks of opened and unopened mail lined the mantelpiece, and the floors by the chairs were piled high with old magazines and books. There was a wastepaper basket by my feet, filled with mail. I flicked on the lighter; felt warmth spread from my gut as I stared into the flame, bringing it close enough to my face to feel the heat on my eyes. I began to breath heavily, feeling more excited, more awake and more alive, than I had ever felt. And in the moment when I dropped the lighter into the basket and watched the flames curl and fold into the edges of the paper, watched the fire breath and gasp and grow, I felt that I finally knew what it was like to kiss a girl. I felt myself go hard without touching. The flames took hold, clawing upwards, claiming the wallpaper. It spread out around me, and it was beautiful. My whole life felt as if it had been leading to this, and I could see the rest of my life, clear and bright, leading away from it. The flame, red and yellow by turn, changing its mood as it moved, began eating at the faces in the photographs. It wasn’t until I coughed and gagged that I realised I had to leave. I ran for the front-door blindly, the hallway full of acrid black smoke. I found the door with my hands and swung it open. I paused for a moment to look back into the flames, before I ran, laughing, back to where my friends waited.
We were out of sight by the time the fire engines turned up, and by that point the house was beyond saving.
My friends stood drinking from the bottles, talking amongst themselves in hushed tones, looking at me with a mix of reverence and celebration.
I didn’t say a word. I had nothing left to say. I’d done all my talking with one act.
I would never be called a coward again.
French Twist
“I think I’m gonna move to Paris.”
“Paris?”
“Yeah, you know how you wanna move to New York? Well I want Paris.”
“When did this happen?”
“Last night. I was watching TV? I thought, hey, that looks nice.”
“What were you watching?”
“Emmanuelle.”
“Right. You’ve never even been to Paris. You don’t know anything about France.”
“I like Garlic Bread.”
“Garlic bread? You’re talking about moving to Paris, not to Pizza Hut. What will you do over there?”
“My Da’ knows this guy over there, Claude or Pierre, something French-”
“-Good to see you’re picking up the lingo-”
“-Shut it. Anyway. Da’ knows this guy, he’ll sort me out a job as a cleaner.”
“You’re moving to Paris to be a cleaner?”
“Not like mops an’ dishes an’ shite, it’s like a code, a hitman, see? Like what Baz does for Da’ except, you know, in French.”
“I know what a cleaner is, bawbag, I haired Baz, remember? But nobody actually calls them cleaners.”
“Right? What do they call them?”
“Hitmen.”
“Oh, right, yeah. But they probably have a different name for them in France, right?”
“Yes, they’ll call them something French.”
“Do you speak any? French, I mean?”
“No, see, that’s my plan. If I don’t speak the language, then if the Polis’ lift me, they can’t interrogate me.”
“Right.”
“But I need to learn a little, I guess. Stuff like toilet and sex, aye? And, hey, I want a catchphrase too, like that guy in Pulp Fiction. Something cool to say just before I do it, something to remember me by.”
“They’ll be dead, Cal. They won’t be remembering you to their pals.”
“Oh yeah. Baws. I’d got that one worked out an’ everything.”
“Okay, hit me with it, go on. What’s you French hitman catchphrase?”
“Je’Mapelle Vengeance.”
Also By The Author
Faithless Street
Old Gold
Runaway Town
About The Author
Jay Stringer was born in Walsall, in the West Midlands of England. He would like everyone to know he’s not dead yet. He is dyslexic, hence he approaches the written word like a grudge match. His work is a mixture of urban crime, mystery, and social fiction, for which he coined the term “social pulp.” In another life he may have been a journalist, but he enjoys fiction too much to go back. He is the author of Old Gold, the first novel in the Eoin Miller crime series, and Faithless Street. He lives in Scotland.
