Authors: A. J. Reid
A Smaller Hell
By A. J. Reid
A SMALLER HELL
Copyright: A. J. Reid
Published: 9
th
November 2012
Publisher: A. J. Reid
Kindle Edition
The right of A. J. Reid to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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The author would like to thank John and Deborah Reid for their love and support.
I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom. – Thomas Carlyle
Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. – Unknown
When I became a fugitive from the law, I was already on the run from myself: numbed by the clockwork of my routine, haunted by the greyness of my work and embarrassed by the Technicolor dreams of my youth.
I saw no future beyond the monoxide rattle of the bus every morning and the smell of freshly scrubbed commuters all set to be sullied by the day ahead of them. They spent a fortune on creams, gels, waxes and muds to promote their chances of successful reproduction and keeping the buses full for another generation. For those who hadn’t yet reproduced, low-lit wine bars and sweaty, pulsating nightclubs remained their churches; and toilet cubicles, their confession booths. Their absolution rituals seemed to work for them, so I bought some hair mud and began joining them on Friday nights out.
The ensuing months were all about drinking too much, suffering endless conversations about reality television and fending off the ape-men who coped with their existential angst by bottling, gouging and stamping any co-existent primates who happened to spill their pint. My loneliness was becoming unbearable and I was envious, because my friends seemed happier in their debauchery than ever.
Before accepting that I was doomed to the status of gloomy onlooker, my last-ditch effort was a seventies fancy dress night. I remember staring in the bathroom mirror at the wig and sunglasses I was wearing, promising that this would be the last time I put myself through it all.
No-one could have predicted what followed, courtesy of my new employer: Dianne Doyle, purveyor of Technicolor
nightmares.
Revellers lumbered past us like cattle while the high-vis shepherds hovered, waiting to round up stragglers. My companion ran her fingers across my jumpsuit’s white fabric and tapped her nails on the gold medallion until she was dragged away by her cackling friends into the November mist. I shrugged, adjusted my jumpsuit for the walk to the taxi rank and set off into the night.
The cold breeze swept me along with the rest of the leaves in the neon, sodium and xenon river, staring into their phones as they zigzagged homeward. I ran my hand down the front of my thigh looking for mine, forgetting for a moment that the jumpsuit had no pockets, forcing me to leave it at home.
It was to be
another
taxi home alone.
Suddenly, I was shoved from behind. I turned around to see a guy in an apron, glaring at me from beneath a Neanderthal brow. His hair was thatched and his complexion was like a potato sack, sallow but tough.
‘Go and clean that off,’ he said, pointing at a white burger van parked about fifty yards back.
‘What?’
I parted my afro wig and squinted at the van through the mist. I could make out the words
clean me
written on its rear doors in the dirt.
‘I didn't write ...’
Before I could finish my sentence, there was a white flash, ringing in my ears and blood in my mouth. The familiar squeak and crunch of fragments of teeth sent my adrenal glands into incontinence, flooding my veins with fighting juice.
I stepped back and moved round to the left to try to get an angle on him for a left hook, but he moved more quickly than I expected. My jab was countered with a right cross to my eye, which immediately became warm and wet with blood. I tried the fastest flurry I could muster, causing him to step back and trip over a raised paving slab. I sent him down with a left hook but he was strong, coming back at me with a body blow that cracked my ribs. I gasped at the sharp pain in my side and drove down a fist into his solar plexus, using my weight to make it count. As he expelled a lungful of
smoky coffee breath into my face, gloved hands grabbed me from above. It was only now that I noticed the slow blue strobe pulsing up the tall, stern concrete of the surrounding buildings and the hi-vis luminous jackets busying around my opponent. They helped him to his feet and began walking him back to his van.
I stepped away from the police and they responded by stalking closer to me while reaching down for their CS sprays and their truncheons.
‘Why isn't
he
being arrested?’ I asked, as the officers tended to Burger Man, bending down to speak to him and even fetching him water.
‘You’re under arrest. Come with us to the station and we can talk about it.’
‘That man assaulted me for no reason. I had every right to defend myself,’ I said.
‘He has a business to run.’
The other policeman shook his head.
Without missing a beat, the younger policeman tried to restrain me in an arm-lock, but I wriggled free and managed to dump him on the ground, only to be gassed by the other. My eyes clouded up, stinging as if someone had rubbed nettle leaves on my eyeballs. My breath caught in my lungs and I staggered into the clutches of his backup. I flipped and flopped about on the deck, only to be hoisted up by each limb. They aimed my legs for the open doors of the riot van, but I splayed them at the last minute, one platform boot on either side of the doors to the amusement of a small audience, who were pointing and laughing. Eventually, they got me in the van with several steaming, gasping officers following in after me. The bustle of the crowd, thumping bass from the clubs and the neon glow from their signs all vanished into blackness as the riot van doors were slammed shut.
We sailed the seas of neon and blood, parting them as it made its voyage to the bridewell. Everyone in the van was silent and the policeman I had floored in the melee continued to stare me out.
‘Bet you thought you had an easy collar there … Before I put you on your arse.’
‘What?’ he snapped, pulling his CS canister from its holster.
‘First day on the job?’
‘Shut up … Or I’ll shut you up.’
‘Take the cuffs off and try it.’
The older policemen laughed, while the red-faced rookie held up his CS canister to my eyes.
‘
Please use in ventilated areas only,
’ I read from the label on the can.
‘I'll ventilate your fucking head,’ he said.
‘Big talk, but I don’t see you doing anything.’
The sergeant turned round in his front seat, laughing. ‘Sounds like you've got your hands full there, Chapman.’
Chapman launched a punch at me and my head snapped back into the mesh of the cage, cutting my scalp. Surging forward, I aimed a head-butt at him, but his colleague took the brunt of it on his forearm.
The sergeant ordered the driver to pull over.
There was a fury of hi-vis yellow, heads, elbows and knees before I found myself dragged out and dumped on my back on the cold, wet tarmac underneath a scrapyard sign. A rusty colossus made of twisted car doors and mauled engines loomed over us, watching silently. I spat some blood on the tarmac and hurled myself in Chapman's direction, but was thwarted again by one of his colleagues.
The sergeant marched towards me, poking his baton in my direction.
‘Name.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Well, we'll go with
Fuck All
for now,’ he growled, wedging the baton into my larynx.
‘Come on, son.’
The sergeant led me into the scrapyard by my cuffed arms, like a gladiator being led into the arena. Instead of cheering crowds, there were groaning towers of rusted steel; instead of blood and severed limbs in the dry Roman earth, there were ripped out exhausts and broken glass in the cold British mud. The sergeant stuck one of his gloved fingers in Chapman's face and barked into his ear. Chapman nodded and the rip of Velcro echoed around the deserted yard as he removed his identity tags.
The sergeant took his time striding back over to me.
‘Ready, Fuck All?’ he asked, unlocking my cuffs.
‘This is a joke, right?’
I rubbed my wrists where the cuffs had been and ran my fingers over my scalp wounds, which had clotted in the icy November wind. A small tunnel between two huge stacks of scrap presented itself as I was frog marched through the yard by Chapman and the sergeant. Was there still time to make a break for it? Would they risk chasing me through there? I broke away, sending the sergeant to the ground and making Chapman swing for me, limiting my options to strike or be struck.
I stepped left and into him, avoiding his lumbering right hand and connecting a counterpunch with his jaw. Clutching at my bloodied, muddied jumpsuit, I fell to my knees with the pain in my ribcage. Chapman lay in the cold mud, shuddering violently, his eyes rolled back in their sockets.
The sergeant's shocked face and the convergence of torch beams upon Chapman's still body were the last things I saw before throwing myself headlong into the deadly crawlspace through the scrap and out into the labyrinth of the docks.