by James Damm
At a traffic light her eyes fell on a homeless man sat on a cardboard seat, sporting ripped and torn clothes with filthy hair and a rugged beard. The man said nothing to the few passers-by and for a second their eyes met, a sarcastic hand from the man the only noticeable connection as the car moved. She’d heard a story once, done little to verify the truth, that a charity had spent a tremendous amount of money on the local homeless population. Equipped with expensive sleeping bags and jackets for the winter, the charity secured fresh shaves and haircuts for all. Within weeks the clothes, sleeping bags and shoes were all found abandoned or missing, the homeless population back to their old, rugged looks. When questioned, each had a similar answer. The fancy clothes had made them look human, coping and okay, and the donations had dried up. So long as you were homeless and wanted a handout, the public expected you to stay and act poor.
The thought clung to Juliet as the car moved from one traffic light to the next. Case by case and day by day, she got another day older and a little closer to the end. A dark thought, death, yet an inevitable truth human beings put out of their mind as much as possible. Even John Fitzgerald had died, someone that seemed to have tricked the inevitable end to every lifespan. Despite a world in possession of people of extraordinary gifts and talent, the old sins remained. The homelessness, the poverty and the hunger. In what they labelled civilisation, the basic needs of food, shelter and warmth had not changed since humanity’s creation, yet still proved an obstacle.
Then there had been the funeral. A letter that allegedly confirmed that John’s military record was a simple fantasy. In the past days of the investigation, Juliet had any requests for access to the fellow soldiers rejected, told it was out of her remit. Yet the doubt had kept nagging at her. What they were hiding? They had arrested Casper, but there was more to it and she knew it.
Pressing events had pulled Juliet away from the case. That the streets of the UK would be just as safe without a superhero to police them was laughable, but Juliet understood the politics just fine. The public wanted a leader and a government to be in control, just enough to maintain order. That meant going hard and being relentless against those involved in the destruction.
The police created a hotline to take down reports, members of the public urged to call in any suspects. A patriotic tone of stiff British resolve and strength got the phones ringing off the hook. Looters, whether taking a television set or a bag of sweets, were easiest to catch. Police caught many because of the boasting of the crimes on social media, only for friends and followers to report the crimes. They were small-fry that the police and prosecutors had grand fun with, racking up the convictions and plea deals. If you plead guilty you get this deal, if you try to fight it, we will fuck you as hard as we can. Most got the message. The cases were running like clockwork on riot-related offences.
Juliet’s function had become similarly robotic. One after another, those accused who were proving harder to pin down would sit down for an interview. Gang members, anarchists or just normal people where evidence of involvement was thin. Like a barcode scanner at a supermarket checkout, Juliet read the mind of the person for any word, phrase or feeling. One by one she relayed what she heard – objects, street names, places and names. The agents pressed on, slapping tables and puffing out chests to show how angry they were and how much they knew. A fair few buckled, fell for the bluff. The rest would take longer.
Quitting had been a constant in Juliet’s mind long before the events of the last year. A world out there in need of help, infinite help. So much that Juliet felt she could spend a lifetime doing her role and not make a dent. Aged eighteen, grabbed from school and offered it all, money and opportunity all in exchange for use of her gift. For a long time now, she stumbled through the days in a blur. Not excited, not challenged. Juliet guessed that was why there was that sentiment to do one thing a day that scares you. Not because those things may be the right thing to do or will work out. It’s because some people die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until seventy-five.
Alone in her thoughts and, as much as Juliet would never say it, she knew there was no quitting. As the last British citizen with abilities, she was a valuable resource, too valuable to lose. The way the world was moving, Juliet felt ever so slightly a hostage to the situation, an invisible chain she dare not test the mettle of too intensely. Juliet had needed a focus outside of work. John Fitzgerald had been killed, murdered, yet Casper Smith was no lone wolf in it all. Something or someone far bigger had pulled the strings, switching his powers off to facilitate the murder. Juliet vowed that she would not rest until she had her reason.
That evening, Juliet considered the possibility she was mad. Before her, pinned up all across the walls, were newspaper clippings, printouts from blogs and websites and her own scrawls. John Fitzgerald’s face was everywhere, pins and thread linking something of a timeline together. If anyone were to swing by, they would think the case obsessed her.
The truth was more extreme than that; she knew it had consumed her.
Chapter Sixteen
“Breaking news coming into us in the last few seconds, Casper Smith, the man accused of murdering John Fitzgerald, has been pronounced dead following an attack in prison this afternoon.”
Shock no longer registered much with Mike Fitzgerald as he watched the news presenter rattle out the details of the story before his eyes. No warning from the police, or the government, Mike digested the breaking story in his mind along with everybody else. There it all was. The case over. John gone and any chance of justice had bled out in a prison shower.
Little had happened since the funeral that concerned his son. After they arrested Casper Smith, it quickly became clear, they had captured his son’s killer. Headlines proclaiming they had caught the murderer rapidly replaced those referencing the chaos at the eulogy. An emergency call had reported what they thought was a body. Instead it was the overdosed but very much alive Casper. When police ran blood tests on the stains soaking his clothes, they discovered that the DNA profile was not his but John Fitzgerald’s.
On the news and television, Casper’s mother stood front and centre as the sole weeping defence for her son in the days to follow. A lonely presence as the public and press called for the death penalty under the loophole of treason, the one given as justification. Every day the media hounded her doorstep, protested outside Parliament and the prison.
From exclusions and expulsions at school to petty thefts and burglaries to fuel an escalating drug habit, Casper had for many years rejected a civilised society. One look at the man – skeletal in figure with fragmented teeth and a hollow stare – and you could not fight the urge to look away. Yet here was one woman, confronted every day with the venom and hatred, who refused to stop defending her son.
Was it a cover up? A conspiracy? Nobody would care now the murderer was dealt with. Mike switched the television off, an unwillingness to allow himself to be bombarded with footage of his son’s killer. Unlike John’s funeral, there would be nobody at Casper’s. As Mike digested the headlines before him, he considered that, out there at least, there was one other parent more alone than he was.
Everyday Mike hauled himself from the sanctuary of sleep into the darkness of the day. Headaches raged, the blood in the toilet had become pools, and his grip on mind and body waned. The dreams of David and John in the maze had become relentless. No longer did he chase his two sons through the labyrinth. With chaos in their eyes, they screeched with inhumane noises, ferocious as they gave chase after their father. Mike would scuttle as fast as he could, the threat behind him always approaching. He would awake terrified, the alcohol the only thing able to put the terror back in the bottle for a few hours.
Routine had become a distant memory. One day Mike lingered in the doorway of David’s old bedroom, cast his eyes over a room that had once breathed with life and potential. Lingered was the correct word, that’s what Mike did – like a stale smell, he clung to the sides. Once that room had been all a li
ttle boy had to call home, all he had to come back to. Now not even the ghosts wasted their time in its four walls. Mike flicked to the clock and outside. The time read three in the morning; he’d risen only a couple of hours before.
David’s bedroom had been the one where it had happened, where John had found his older brother hanging by a belt. When Mike finally stumbled home from the pub, steaming, the body had been taken down and taken away. A despondent son in the front room. Eyes raw, red, hatred in his eyes. Mike had buried that memory just as he had buried everything else.
The booze had lost its ability to numb. Ruthless in its consumption, Mike still couldn’t keep the shakes, anxiety and terror at bay. A recluse in his home, distant from the pubs in town, Mike could only muster the courage to scamper to the corner shop and back. The windows blacked out with newspapers, Mike did all he could to blockade himself from the world beyond it. But the world didn’t stop playing its games in his mind. All the haunting memories from over the years, all the horrors he’d seen and took part in. The drink couldn’t rob him of it all.
One night, so late and dark there was barely a car on the road, Mike let his legs walk him the direction he wanted to go. On the bridge, above the railway track he looked down upon the metal that spread all the way into the distance. The east coast line, from London to York, through Newcastle and to Edinburgh. Every day the train sped past Bellington with not much more than a passing glance or concern. Nothing bothered to stop at Bellington much anymore. It was a place people went to die, or stayed to.
As Mike watched a late night train speed underneath him, shaking the foundations of the bridge, he considered whether destiny always had this in mind – God’s punishment, robbing him of anybody he loved until he became the very last. Was this his punishment, suicide alone in the cancerous town he’d never been able to leave? Was that the end for men like Mike? Violent men meeting a violent end?
Half an hour passed as Mike swigged from a bottle of rum. As another train shot past at an astonishing speed, Mike’s hand gripped the stone wall tighter. If he got the timing right, one big lift over the top and it’d all be over. Mike pictured his body cracking the front of the train, a traumatised driver braking with the damage already done.
There’d be those muttering darkly to themselves at the selfishness of the method, angered at the inconvenience. There’d also be the sympathetic, the passengers left hollowed out by it. An incident on the tracks was how they’d describe it, at least until the papers picked up who exactly Mike was.
The one Mike pitied most was the driver, the unwilling participant in his demise. Would they look after them? Offer the counselling to move past the horror Mike would rain down upon them? As Mike hovered at the bridge’s brick, all the thoughts of his sons in his mind, he walked away. Too much of a coward to live, too much of a coward to kill himself either.
There was always a guy, everybody knew their own. Maybe the deadbeat from high school, the rough and ready former co-worker, or the man with the reputation in the pub’s corner. The kind of man that either knew someone or could source it themselves. Anything. Anything. A woman for the night, a weapon or something hard to consume. Mike knew his, a man called Harry.
In the working-men’s club was where Mike found him. Alone, pint in hand, nobody in the place daring to look sideways at the man. Scarred knuckles clenched the remnants of a pint, the number consumed, lost.
“I want some heroin,” Mike stated as he propped himself on the stool opposite. “Heroin and somebody to guide me through it.”
“You don’t want heroin, Mike,” was all that Harry said, not breaking his gaze from in front of him. “Now fuck off.”
That was the code, wasn’t it? Junkie etiquette, not to shoot up a newbie because they didn’t want them to turn out the same way. Unless you asked more than once, which Mike did.
The next night Harry, for a few notes, scribbled down an address on a napkin.
“Ask for Rust,” was all that Harry said, scrunching the bank notes into his jacket pocket. “Now fuck off.”
The house wasn’t far from Mike’s terrace. The next day, in the afternoon when he mustered the courage, he knocked on the door and a figure with wild ginger hair answered. Mike asked if he was the man named Rust and only suspicious and delirious eyes looked back. Mike flashed some bank notes, and the door opened wider, creating a path inside. For money, the man would be anyone Mike wanted him to be. Mike wanted him to be a guide.
The bank notes snatched, Mike dropped his coat to the floor and made his way into the front room. Over on the sofa a younger man slumbered, comatose, sprawled over the arm of a chair. Mike opted for a seat on a torn armchair as the man he presumed to be Rust walked into the kitchen and came back with a roll of aluminium foil, a pair of scissors, and some kitchen roll.
Rust took a bag of heroin from his pocket and placed it on the glass table. It was tiny, the size of half a nail on his little finger. Mike watched as Rust unrolled the foil, tore off a piece about ten inches wide, and shaped it into a neat square. Every step methodical and well-practised, Mike watched as Rust efficiently scorched every inch of the foil with a lighter. First it went black, but he quickly wiped off the residue to leave a beautiful silver sheen. He tore off another piece of foil and rolled it into the shape of a straw.
Using the scissors, Rust opened the bag, and sprinkled the powder, light brown, into a long groove he had crafted on the foil. Using the same lighter, he heated the underside of the foil, directly beneath the heroin, and that’s when the drug came alive. The dull brown powder transformed into a magnificent, golden brown puddle.
Rust placed the tray at an angle and, like lava rolling down a mountainside, it oozed down the groove of the foil, leaving white smoky fumes in its wake. The smell was pungent, similar to smoked fish, and it wafted through the air. Rust went first, signalling Mike to watch as he used the straw he’d made to hoover up the fumes, some of which clung to the foil. With barely a breath left, he took a pull on a cigarette, and held it in for as long as he could. Mike remained mesmerised by the ritual, already hooked on the drug’s charms.
Rust tilted the tray and began caressing the lighter on the underside of the foil, the crystal that had formed returning to its liquefied state. Once again rolling down the groove like molten rock, Mike inhaled deeply, chasing the fumes that followed in its trail. With his last breath, he sucked on the cigarette; the filter collapsing under the strength of his grip. He held it in for as long as he could, then gasped with a breathless exhalation.
Within a minute, everything changed. Thoughts left the room. Anxiety left the room. Fear left the room. A softening of the muscles. A faint tilting of the head. Mike plunged into the armchair. Agitation, all the weight from the previous years – all of it left the room. Varying waves of warmth stirred around his body. It felt good. Everything felt very good. Mike didn’t remember his body ever feeling so much sensation through it; he didn’t remember being capable of feeling so much pleasure. Everything melted around him, every problem, ache and pain. Nothing else mattered.
As the hours passed, Mike continued with further hits. The technique that had mesmerised him earlier became part of his own skill set, albeit sloppier. With every inhalation Mike fell deeper into stillness, his fears and the agony in his own mind dissolved. There was no need to escape his own mind, to get away from himself. The new world Mike had begun creating for himself was an inner world of bliss, where he floated weightlessly without concern. The actual world, Mike could always get another hit. With every line, that actual world felt further away, the alternative world, the heroin world, the shelter to be sought out. Everything was safe there. Everything was quiet.
When Mike next awoke, no nightmares had consumed him. The world that greeted him was one of calm. With lazy eyes he scanned the room, saw only darkness through the gaps in the blind. Mike eyed the remnants of his day and smiled, dissolving back into his chair. As he laid back, an itch tingled across his body, mostly on his wrists. Graduall
y, deliberately, Mike clawed his nails back and forth, up and down his wrists. For what felt like an hour, his scratching became one of the most gratifying experiences of his life.
Outside, the light had brightened and a flicker of it crept inside through the gaps. Usually the morning light brought only depression for Mike, the gloom and darkness of the night masking how he felt. But with his new protective blanket, the depression never came.
Bringing himself to his feet, all the money gone, Mike headed for the door, still light and free as if a cloud. The world outside, the real one he had returned to, lay in the twilight before morning broke. On his stagger home from Rust’s house, Mike failed to encounter another human being, only the birds singing for company. Usually the sound of birds in the morning only brought a wave of depression and despair washing over Mike. Yet as Mike listened, he found only peace.
Once home, the nauseousness began. Mike dashed for his bathroom as sick moved up through his throat. An endless, dense mass, dropped into the sink below. The consistency was like baby food, full of lumps, and it wouldn’t stop coming. A valve had been loosened, and the force of the vomit proved unrelenting. When it finally stopped, the remaining sick sat deep in the sink, the water from the tap unable to soften its dense nature. Mike swirled it around with his hand, attempting to force the water and vomit to mix, but it didn’t work. As the watery sick drained down the sink, the stodgy lumps remained. Scooping them out, Mike hauled handful after handful into the toilet bowl before flushing it.
The moment should have shamed Mike, just as all the moments throwing up alcohol down the toilet that had come before did. But the euphoria, the heroin pumping through his body rejected any intrusion of negativity. There wasn’t a care in the world that could burst Mike’s bubble. Whatever pain he would go through, whatever ill thought entered his mind, the heroin would be close, the heroin would look after him.
