Kill Someone

by Luke Smitherd

  “Yeah, but be quick.”

  “So, I can use the toilet?” I repeated, speaking as loudly as I could without making it too obvious. She actually rolled her eyes in nervous frustration.

  “Yes, I said yes. It’s over there, go.” I didn’t look to see if my words had been overheard. I knew they had. Even if I hadn’t been black, I was a stranger, and in bars where ignorance reigns and tribalism is at its worst, strangers are viewed with the utmost scrutiny. But some cocky punk black kid? Fuggeddaboudit.

  I turned and limped to the door marked GENTLEMEN—a word that was definitely ironic—and pushed it open, feeling twelve sets of eyes nearly pushing me over with the force of their hatred. As terrified as I was, the malice that now seemed to thicken the air around me confirmed one thing, at least: I had made the right choice.

  The men’s room, as I expected, stunk of piss. The whole thing had, like the bar itself, clearly been installed several decades ago. The walls were entirely white-tiled, with a ceramic urinal attached to one wall and a single chipped ceramic sink mounted on the other. Half a mirror hung above it. A condom machine that looked as if it had been set on fire at some point was hung to the right of that. And to the right of that… three toilet cubicles. My breathing was very heavy at this point, and I felt like I might collapse, so I darted into one. I closed the door and sat down on the ancient toilet seat.

  I only had to wait. I knew one of them would come.

  They’d heard me say where I was going, and I knew at least one of them would be watching to make sure the black kid left. Well, then they would see that the black kid didn’t come out again. If they thought the way I thought they did, that would be not just a source of curiosity, but of offence; another offence on top of the offence of entering the bar in the first place.

  I knew I’d made things worse for myself. I was now stuck. Taking a few punches and bolting for the door would have been bad enough, but now there were two doors between me and the outside world. I was sure I wasn’t going to get killed, as that would be idiotic even for these guys—doing it on their own turf would be crazy—but a severe beating, one that I couldn’t easily escape? That was certainly possible, if not probable. My heart was working away at my ribcage and it was wearing knuckledusters. My cock had shriveled back into my body until it was the size of an acorn.

  Five minutes passed.

  Again: relief and contradicting desperation. Come on, I thought. Identify yourselves so I know who has to die.

  Ten minutes.

  Didn’t they hear you? Maybe they were listening, but you didn’t say it loud enough?

  You did. You definitely did.

  Then where are they?

  Maybe it’s not that kind of pub anymore? Maybe you’re wrong?

  Fifteen minutes.

  The door for GENTLEMEN opened.

  Heavy footsteps and a voice.

  “What did Mick say? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. He’s got experience. He done it, you know, security an’ that. Uh-huh. It was up north, some school in the middle nowhere… yeah, I dunno, it burned down or something.” I heard the door swing closed and the speaker walked into the room. My skin tightened as I realized I’d made a mistake. I wasn’t in the cubicle nearest the door. I was sitting in the one furthest into the room. If the speaker was going to do anything to me, and stood between this cubicle and the door, I would have to get past him to get out. The footsteps continued in my direction, as if they were heading toward the urinal. “Some special school,” the voice said. “Rothberry I think it was, something like that. What? I dunno, ask him, he don’t talk about it much. He can tell you. He probably knows someone, can hook Dave up, tell Dave I said to talk to Mick. Yeah, no worries darlin’. Is Candy there?”

  The man’s shadow passed under the door to my cubicle, and he stopped just to the right of it. He was no longer between me and the exit.

  Or he’s just going for a piss.

  That was certainly possible.

  “Put her on for me will you, love… hello? Hello darlin’. What are you up to? Uh-huh? Yeah? Oh, that sounds nice. Are you being good? Good. That’s what I like to hear. I’ll be back in a little bit, so you behave yourself. All right? All right. Put Mummy back on.”

  I felt myself relax.

  He’s not that kind of guy. He’s a family man. Racist enough to be here, but not racist enough for an assault.

  … and then un-relax. Relief and desperation.

  So where are the ones that hate enough?

  “Hi. Ok. Yeah, all good. Ok, speak to you later.” I heard the phone being put back into a pocket full of change and then there was silence.

  The feet didn’t move away. And then another minute passed and the feet were still outside my cubicle.

  The man just stood there breathing quietly.

  I tried not to breathe at all.

  He’s a family man. It’s ok. He’s a family ma—

  Three hard knocks came on the cubicle door. Then silence. My blood turned into water. More silence. I didn’t dare speak, although I knew I had to. Here it was. There were two empty cubicles. There was only one reason he was knocking on mine.

  Maybe he’s checking to see if you’re all right.

  The knocks came again, slightly harder.

  “Occupied,” I said, without thinking. I had to say something, after all.

  “What you doing?” the voice asked. It was forceful, but it didn’t sound angry.

  “Using the toilet,” I said. My voice sounded weak. I hated it.

  “You doing drugs?”

  I was surprised into silence for a moment. I hadn’t expected that at all.

  “No,” I said. I heard a rustling of clothes and the shadow changed shape for a moment. He’d bent down and straightened up again.

  “You’ve not even got your jeans around your ankles, so you’re not shitting,” the voice said with a chuckle that was utterly unpleasant. “And your feet are pointing forward, so you’re not pissing. So you’re sitting on the toilet doing something. What you doing?” I desperately searched for an answer.

  You have to go out there. This has to happen.

  But the idea was unthinkable.

  “I’m not… I don’t feel very well,” I said. “I had to sit down for a second.”

  There was a pause, and then two quick and loud raps on the door.

  “Open the door, mate.”

  “Why?” I blurted.

  “Just open the fucking door.”

  Everything in me bellowed in a deafening chorus of don’t open the door, both in fear and because this scumbag was telling me what to do, but this situation was the reason that brought me here in the first place. I became terribly aware that my rage—as well as my thoughts of anger and bravado outside of the actual reality—had abandoned me. It had been utterly nullified by the twin traitors of adrenaline and instinctive flight response. How could anyone possibly feel this and have a fight response? How was that possible?

  I remained petulant, at least. I didn’t want to do anything this guy told me to, but then I realized that if I opened the door and this guy attacked me, then he was the man I was later going to murder. I would have the last word; the ultimate last word.

  So why couldn’t I move?

  I forced myself to my feet, and I saw the shadow take a step away from the door. My limp noodle of a hand found the thin, lightly rusting bolt on the cubicle door and pulled it back. Why, I thought frantically, why didn’t I bring the hammer or the knife? I deliberately hadn’t done so. It had seemed like the right choice at the time. If I had taken the hammer, I might’ve ended up using it in this exact situation - committing murder in a very public place. I simply couldn’t risk it. The choice had made sense at the time, but all I could do now was wish for the reassuring weight and discomfort of it against my hip once more. I opened the door and saw the face of the man I suspected I was going to murder.

  I didn’t recognize him as one of the men I’d watched turning around to gawk at me earlier. He was older t
han me by some way, maybe in his mid-thirties. He was slightly taller than me, and not big, but bigger than I was. Stocky. He wore a padded jacket over his football shirt too, giving him extra bulk and presence. His face was lean and wiry and slightly red, be it from holiday sunburn or blood pressure. The whites of his eyes were large, and he was staring straight at me. He was physically tense, but did not seem nervous.

  I stood in front of him, just staring back, frozen. The silence went on, and I realized that this was part of it for him. This was part of the power play. I knew it and still stared back. I silently cursed my injured foot, my unstable base making me more vulnerable and uncertain.

  Just say something to me, a threat, then I can leave. Then I’ll know who you are. Then I’ll know it’s not bravado for the others. I’ll know what you are.

  Those thoughts might sound brave, but they were not. They were desperate.

  “Are you taking the piss out of us or what,” he said, and there was no question in the sentence, despite the words. This man had already decided that I was indeed taking the piss.

  “No…” I said. “I… no. I just came in to… sit down for a moment because I wasn’t feeling well. I feel sick—”

  “You don’t look it,” he said, interrupting, his face blank, his jaw clenching. “You look nervous. What you nervous about?”

  “I’m not nervous.” The lie was utterly transparent.

  “Am I making you nervous?”

  Go. Get out of here.

  But I couldn’t. I had to know, even though it took everything I had to keep standing there. The question was carefully and expertly chosen in the manner of bullies since time immemorial. If I said I was nervous, then I had a reason to be, and if I said I wasn’t, then I was antagonizing him.

  “I just don’t feel well.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  Oh, I certainly did.

  “The Bonnie Minstrel,” I said, but I knew I wasn’t answering his real question. He did too, and he knew I knew.

  “Don’t be a cunt,” he said, and the fact that his face didn’t change as he spoke the words did something inside my stomach. “You know who this pub is for, don’t you?”

  I very nearly played dumb, very nearly chanced it. But the truth was too obvious.

  “Yes,” I said, “I know, and I’m not trying to, you know, piss anybody off. I just thought, thought that, you know, I was going to be sick—”

  “It’s not for you. You know this place isn’t for you. That’s the whole point. It’s not for people like you. It’s not for you.” He was shaking his head, but his eyes remained locked on mine. His words came out quickly. “Not for you,” he said again. “You know that. So what you doing?”

  “I felt sick—”

  “That’s bullshit. That’s bullshit. What are you doing? Tell me what you’re doing. You’re not leaving this toilet until you tell me what you’re doing.”

  To my utter panic, he took a step forward, planting his feet against mine. His eyes had widened. To my utter shame, I leaned away.

  This was a mistake. You didn’t think this through at all.

  A horrible realization washed over me in that moment. My anger, my big plan to anchor me and steel me and power me through whatever I had to do, had abandoned me. I thrust about in the darkness of my mind for some steel, and there, in the moment, I found none.

  “I think you’re taking the piss,” he said, and he was breathing heavily now. “Student, are you?”

  “No, I have a job, I work at the—”

  That was when his head cannoned forward and butted me on the bridge of my nose with devastating force.

  At this point, some of you may be reading this and thinking so what? Someone in a pub toilet giving you shit? Why didn’t you just head-butt him in the face first and be done with it? All in a day’s work. If so, you aren’t like me then, and I wish I had that part of you in my brain, but I didn’t, and I don’t. I know that now.

  The world went white, and I really did feel sick as I fell backwards, my legs buckling and my arms flailing pointlessly, attempting to stop my fall to the grubby tiled floor of the toilet cubicle. My head glanced off the edge of the toilet bowl and my teeth smashed together, the two-year-old porcelain veneer attached to my right front tooth splitting in half. I hit the floor hard, my head to the right of the base of the toilet as blood jetted out of my nose and my vision became blurry. All I could taste was copper and thought wasn’t possible.

  The impact of the blow to my face wasn’t just shocking physically. I had never been attacked so severely in my life. The idea of the world where I could have a nice conversation with my Dad in the bathroom—the world where I could perhaps have a genteel middle-class family meal—flashed before my eyes like an image of utter madness. How could that world exist when my nose had been smashed by a man in a dirty pub toilet?

  I put my hand to my face and it came away as a scarlet glove; I will never forget seeing the blood pooling at the edge of my watch strap.

  “Uh,” I gasped, blood spraying from my top lip as my spastic breath burst forth, ”uh, uh… uh.” I rocked on the floor like an upended turtle, blinking.

  Stunned, was the first thought that came through, detached and observant. This is what they mean when they talk about being stunned.

  I lifted my head, only half-seeing, and saw the man standing in the cubicle doorway. He was watching me, but he was still. His face was expressionless again; that was the worst thing. That was when I knew that—perhaps because of my stunned state, a piece of clarity in the chaos—that I could murder this man. He pointed a finger at me, and my hands automatically came up to show submission.

  “You’re taking the piss,” he said again. “This is what happens. All right? This is what happens. You’re not coming back here, are you?”

  “Muh. Muh,” I said, unable to get the words out, so I shook my head even though doing so made white spots dance before my eyes.

  You have to get out of here.

  It was too late now, but I was dimly aware that he’d made his point. He could now go back to his table and tell them how he’d shown me what was what.

  You have to get OUT of here. Your face, what has he done to your face—

  “’Cos you fucking know, right? You fucking know what happens?”

  I nodded, blinking and wide-eyed. Why couldn’t I get my eyes to focus?

  The man stepped forward into the cubicle. I can remember the sight; the walls of the cubicle trapping me on either side and my assailant looming over me. Kick him in the balls, a distant part of my mind said, but even if I’d been able to get my legs to work I wouldn’t have done it. If I was being offered a chance to check out of this conflict with only this much damage being done, I was desperate to take it. I think about that too sometimes, when the nights don’t seem to end. What was the line from The Shawshank Redemption? Time draws out like a blade. It really does.

  “You know, right?” His eyes were wide again and his breathing was speeding up.

  No—

  His boot came up and stomped down on my groin. I cried out. This time the pain was of a completely different nature, and I felt my eyes prickle as I thought for a horrible moment that I was going to cry.

  Not that. Anything but that. You will give this cunt your submission, but you will not cry for him.

  “You fucking know, right?” the man said, and he was almost shouting, leaning down, his victory giving him some kind of animalistic anger. You’ve won, I remember thinking, what the hell are you getting so angry about? “You don’t fuck about!” His foot came up again, but I could see by the way he raised it vertically rather than swinging it back that he was planning to stomp somewhere on my leg - the leg attached to the foot that I’d injured at Neil’s. I clumsily tried to move it, but it wasn’t enough. His boot came down on my ankle, and I felt something crunch slightly. An almost wet, warm-feeling pain ballooned at the spot where he’d stomped. It was a heavy pain, the type where you know something is
n’t going to heal well.

  I tried to sit up, to begin my attempt to get past him somehow. The man pointed at me again. “You don’t! Fuck! About—”

  Suddenly, the man seemed to dart backwards out of the cubicle. I blinked, wondering if it was my eyes or some kind of concussion-based illusion, but it wasn’t anything of the sort. The man had actually travelled several feet away from me, stumbling as he went. I thought he was going to hit the far wall, but he managed to get his feet under himself and stop. His face reddened even more deeply as he quickly straightened up, his chest sticking out. He was looking at someone. Someone who had pulled him off me? Whoever it was, the cubicle walls were obscuring him from view.

  The man was still breathing hard, his eyes now looking ready to burst from his face… but less certain, I thought. He wasn’t backing down from whomever had come in, but that confidence, that terrible confidence wasn’t quite there anymore. The only sound I could hear was the man’s heavy breathing.

  “D’you fucking want something?” the man said, and he was trying to sound sure of himself. It didn’t quite work. There was no response. The man moved slightly towards whomever the newcomer was, unnerved by the silence and only being capable of thinking in terms of attack. “I said do you fucking want something?” It was almost a shout.

  And then I noticed the man’s line of vision and just how much he had to look up.

  The man moved forward again, lost for anything else to do.

  “What the fuck are you supposed to be dressed as—” The sentence was cut short as something hit the man in the chest, hard, and he staggered backwards like he’d been shot. There was a strange secondary effect to the blow, as if the man felt the force of it first, and then a moment later, the damage it had done. He began to open his mouth again, the finger began to raise in yet another point, and then a hand went to his chest. He made a little strangled noise with his mouth. He then wheezed in a huge gulp of air and straightened up. He swung a pointless, limp-armed punch.