Short Fiction

He picks up the phone before quite realising that the friends he had were not real. They were the cardboard companions of business who have been liberated, clutching their possessions and ink-smudged severance cheques. He imagines them being led, blinking and wooden to the car park gates. Wound up and set onto the pavement, where they teeter forth with their Best Dad in the World mugs, cassette tapes and desk dolls; dispersed on prevailing winds to seek new outlets for their sense of routine. To drive taxicabs or learn cad-cam, light-headed with the insecure thrill of the unhomed. Looking for molecules to bind to. To feel aligned with again.

How had it come to pass to have not a single acquaintance outside of the company network? No social failsafe for the unthinkable prospect. He wanted to share the news of his success, or the beginnings of it anyway. But their numbers are stored in the mobile phone, long since mummified with the firm's corpse which was interred hastily, like a scandalised pharaoh.

He consoles himself with the knowledge that his bubble is still relatively unburst and he is not like them; cast adrift in a world of MP3 players, USB sticks and Cafetieres; flexi-time and NVQs. He did well enough out of it, having devoted twenty-five years of his time to their now-defunct endeavours. He feels the pain of his missing importance, but doesn't let it get the better of him. With the settlement, he has signed a five-year lease for a warehouse on a brand new industrial estate. Having negotiated a price he knows is too much for a property that is too big, the saleswoman seems momentarily nervous about telling him that he is to be the sole signed-up occupant of the twenty-unit scheme. She doesn't say 'only' though, she says 'first', making him sound like a pioneer, a man of action. He now knows the word which has eluded him since she first drew her painted nails across the back of his hand, feigning innocence. It is 'honey trap'.

So he shrugs, saying he doesn't mind, but can't help noticing how a shimmer of relief laps at the shore of her confidence for a moment, before dissolving at her painted lips. They part, revealing a shark's row of teeth, capped by pearlescent, commission-funded crowns, and the deal is all but sealed. Besides, she assures him, he is an entrepreneur, and others will follow his suitn. But it feels strange now, driving onto the new tarmac, past the silent blocks of roller-shutters to reach his new office. Not strange - stupid. He feels stupid. Her voice no longer resonates in the cavernous shell of the building, nor in the recesses of his mind. He has not been drawn by the promise of 'premier accessibility' in the northern corridor, and state-of-the-art facilities. He has been seduced by a smooth-skirted siren who laughed at his jokes and smelled of Swiss edelweiss.

She had done everything, he concludes over a tepid drink, except slide up the hem of her skirt and say “fuck me”, and the true source of his touchiness rears up like a bright flame. He should have tested her back, to see how far she would go, instead of masturbating grimly into the unplumbed sink of the ladies toilet, where her scent still clung, after she had gone.

So the money had been consumed in bricks and mortar and in the artful dentistry of April Murphy, but he was still in control. His wife might bemoan the lack of a new car or holiday, but she hadn't seen the way this girl could act.

A blessing, perhaps.

He checks around the place, makes sure the wiring is safe, the alarm is connected, and - now that there is water - the taps are turned off, then leaves.

* * *

Driving home he is visited by an epiphany. Women never let you out at junctions. They seldom stop and beckon you into the line in front. Even when there is no prospect of advancing themselves, they’ll hem you in needlessly. He has always known this, but it has never been vocalised so starkly in his mind before and with such conviction.

It is too much of a concession, too big an abdication of power. The proof is confirmed almost immediately as some bitch in an old-school Mercedes goes around him, squeezing elaborately through the six-inch gap where his wing mirror blocks her exit, rather than letting him out first. He throws her an exasperated glare, but - as usual - there is little prospect of eye contact. Her pinched face floats grimly for a second above the tightened knuckles gripping the wheel, and she is gone.

Can I be alone in noticing this, he wonders? Isn't it true that women turn into power-mongers on the road? In what scheme of things does that sit? It seems completely at odds with their perceived gentility, their purported even-handedness and he is suddenly and strangely unsettled by it.

He tamps down the bland drones of the radio to think it through. My own wife is a queen of culprits, he realises. A prime offender. She lived and drove in London, and he is quick to recall the appalling lack of courtesy whenever she takes the wheel. Lack is possibly the wrong word; ignorance might be more appropriate. She seems entirely innocent of road etiquette or the fact she is doing anything wrong, and he remembers how often he has sat cringing in the passenger seat while some sad-faced gentleman waits, junction-mired by their car in stationary traffic. Not only that, she can't park for toffee. How many times has he found himself squeezing into the increasingly asymmetrical gaps on their driveway? Christ help the supermarket crowd.

On the few occasions she has ever yielded road space, her mouth is a fierce line of begrudgement; the hand movement to signal them through churlish. It is their secret power, he thinks; an antidote to male superiority. Subconscious as it may be, he realises, they don't relinquish it lightly. Not at all.

From this new knowledge, a sense of shame arises. He can't quite believe he has stood by and let it happen all these years. Moments later, and in the interests of science, he decides to field test the theory, by nudging out at the next junction; pre-empting another lady's generosity. Sure enough, she divines and crushes his intentions in the same instant, drifting over into the path of an oncoming wagon to ensure that he doesn't get through. Her car buzzes through the gap like a mosquito, while the lorry’s air-brakes protest violently, and they both slam on; him pale and angry, the wagon driver incredulous. Sick to his stomach, any remaining shreds of doubt fall away, once and for all.

“Fairer sex my arse!” he mouths through the window at the check-shirted trucker, whose shoulders are swallowed in a palm-splaying gesture of ‘but what the fuck were you thinking even to try?’ Of course, they cannot communicate sensibly behind glass, and that wasn't really the intention. Theatricals and thumbs-up apportion the blame, and they settle back to their thrones, one high and one low. Surviving potentates of an attempted coup.

By the time he steers the nine year old saloon onto his driveway, he has rationalised the entire theory, sharpening it to a point of dogma. "Chaps are almost the entire opposite," he scribbles into the new-smelling book intended for orders and client specifications. "Not because we are more kindly - quite the opposite. When I let someone through, I feel a sense of propriety. I have obliged you to me. I proved that I can be benevolent, I made a gesture. In return, the respondent acknowledges that I made a gesture. When they don't – and isn't it just always the frigging woman!!!? - it is the most abominable slur. I'd give anything then to take back my generosity and leave them smouldering at the roadside as I am smouldering now at the lack of gratitude. Conversely, when I am the subject waved ahead, it is with fealty that I am compelled to observe the ritual in reverse. Now I am obliged to flatter, with salutes or intricate homages of headlight and indicator. The duality of purpose promotes a win-win ideal, at least among fellow men. Yes, it is a smug notion. Perhaps even a petty one. But otherwise - well, wouldn't we all just be in a permanent state of rage?"

With a schoolboy flourish, he writes TRUFAX! underneath, underlining it three times, before slipping the pad into his briefcase. He is giddy, elated, and before he reaches the front door, polarised by this new-found belief. It is the change of routine, he supposes, the different commute. The chance to observe the same monkey business in a different jungle. He has had the scales lifted from his eyes in many ways since the old firm went broke.

Despite the urge to blurt over dinner, he keeps it all to himself. It is heady stuff that he knows will provoke an argument if he acts too hastily. She will only deny it, and the silences today are marginally better than the contentious flurries they are bandying at one another of late. He decides not to broach the subject of money either, at least until he has a few customers on his books. It all makes for a typically sombre evening.

* * *

One month later. An identical morning of formless drizzle, peopled by convoys of migrating traffic, their exodus forever doomed. Who are they? What special breed has come to welcome this coughing standstill as a part of their lives? Where can they be going, and how do they expect to arrive there any time soon?

From his side of the road, the folly is immense. But the biggest question is one that continues to elude him. What motivates them to keep on doing this - day after day, inching forward, like microbes, trapped in the guts of stallions?

He feels vindicated now in his choice of location, hidden from this choking madness. Never mind that it lies in an unregarded area, away from the heartland that success warrants. He banters against the flow of traffic like a cheery prefect, resisting an urge to wave at the yawning bystanders, in clumps along the dual carriageway. All he can see are the shiny rooftops that stretch away to a point, and he is reminded of an unbalanced ecology of beetles, overlooked and mired, consuming their habitat to an impasse that leaves them grazing mutely on the spot they occupy, breathing each others fumes for sustenance. The thought of their misery makes him smile.

The miles unravel dourly, and he is disappointed, after peeling from the comfort of two lanes, that there are no more inept females to flesh out his theory further. It is an unusually quiet rush hour, observed by sulky crows and accusatory livestock. The biggest threat in this new countryside of narrow roads, he has come to recognise, are tractors. They are more than content to bumble up and down constricted routes at peak hours, carrying a big 'Fuck You' sticker in lieu of a registration plate. But today, it seems, even these ponderous bullies are absent.

The journey has become familiar during the formative weeks and months. He has ironed out the kinks, judging what paths to avoid, offsetting the threat of farm machinery against the scavenging of time, and now it feels satisfyingly well-trodden. But today is like the aftermath of holocaust, where nothing stirs except wintry blades of crop stubble, goaded by a cool, post-nuclear breeze. For all he knows, it could be a Sunday.

This day should be spent setting up new accounts, cold-calling customers and filling the newly-installed computer with expensive software. There is a supplier to be contacted, who will hopefully, in turn, fill his warehouse with physical product. But he finds himself unable to focus, fixated once more by the problems of cars, traffic and women. It is only when cold claws of dusk creep through the tall windows, scratching hunched shapes on the Magnolia walls, that he breaks from tapping at the keyboard, noticing nightfall.

He peers at the screen, hands still hooked and poised over the computer. The wrist pad is waxy where the heels of his palms have squirmed away blindly for hours, while his fingers danced across the keys. He is dimly aware that the prolonged effort has taken its toll, and that his knuckles are now squealing like rusty hinges. Somehow the entire day has liquidised, spiralling down the plughole of his discursive thoughts. The monitor screen glares back at him, the words glowing in phosphorescent clumps. There is grit behind his eyes and he flexes his abused hands, balling them each, in turn, to smack one against the flat of the other.

"Paper covers rock," he muses groggily. Then something behind clears its throat and he jumps, screaming silently into the bitten fist.

"You know, you can write all you want, but eventually something’s gonna have to be done about those bitches."

Towering above him, with trademark nonchalance, is the movie star Samuel L. Jackson. He deduces this from the voice, which is low and sonorous. The voice of truth. His physicality, though, is dressed in long shadows, abetted by the neglected fluorescents. Jackson goes on to compliment him on what he has written, saying that it is deep. Soulful. He is exactly what they are looking for; a man with his finger on the pulse. Someone who sees behind the veil.

"We are rare creatures, you and I," he tells him. Then begins calmly pacing, his voice earnest, but rising on a gradual scale. Occasionally, he stops to reiterate a point and motes of darkness gyre around him like silent swarms of insects. By the end of the discourse, he knows what he must do. He is buoyed with pre-eminence for being chosen, especially by someone of such high standing. Never has he felt so clean. So spiritually invigorated.

"You represent the last truth," Jackson concludes. "The way and the life. Folk like us can't just sit back and let this happen."

The actor confides that he has travelled all the way from Burbank studios, California to deliver this message, and it comes from the top. Once more, his pride soars. He feels feted and worthy again, just like the old days. The rest of the brief is wrapped up in studious, almost melancholy terms, and he doesn't hear the word 'motherfucker' once. But when the actor turns to leave, a part of him that wants to question and reason and see, glimpses - between swishes of long leather and splashes of displaced moonlight - ragged scales on a bristling, whip-like tail.

He rises, stiffly, with the phone ringing. It is his wife, asking about dinner. While he fumbles for an answer, it seems as though a fever has finally broken, and once again there is startling clarity in his mind.

On the way home, an SUV follows too close, its headlights full-beam, filling every mirror with blinding sodium. He stands it for two miles, letting the rage build. Then, at the quiet crossroads where crows scouted for carrion in the morning, he stops, gets out and confronts the oppressor. She is a bland, scowling woman with a rebuke already nestling on her lips. His eyes still burn with after-images, and he wastes no time in bludgeoning her where she sits with the steel tent peg he sometimes uses to lever open the stubborn bonnet catch, then stuffing her body into the boot of her own car. One-nil.

* * *

In the morning he is aware of some broken dreams but no specifics. When he arrives at work, the computer he left switched on has crashed overnight. He hadn't saved. Greeting him is a death knell: "A fatal exception has occurred..." rendered on a backdrop of Police Box blue.

'Blue screen of death' he murmurs, recalling, after some fumbling, that it came from the lips of the tech spod who installed the system. Distinctly, he recalls the parting words of his visit: "It shouldn't happen again, all tidied up now. Just teething problems."

He shrugs philosophically. It has gone up in smoke, but the fact is - he needs no written indictment. Samuel L had made it all blindingly clear and, as if on cue, there is a phone call from him, commending him on his good work. The clean-up has begun. Together, he promises, they will do sterling deeds.

"You need to start taking care of business, though," he drawls. "It's important that you eat once in a while, keep your strength up. And your base there needs to be secure for obvious reasons. Keep up the good work pal."

"Thanks," he mumbles, conscious of the same swimmy fugue settling over him. He knows he is a vessel, and must fill himself up with insight, to act with the unflinching dedication he was chosen for.

"Well, gotta run. Talk soon," the actor says and he pictures the mimed gesture at Samuel's end. Cocked index finger and thumb, double-clack of tongue in cheek. The line goes dead.

Gotta run!

"Turned tail and ran, that big old boondog rat," he whispers, and sets himself to business, phoning the supplier, organising credit, security lights, the internet.

At the end of the day, he is tired, ready to collapse into a bath and doze off. But the Lord himself grants him a sinner, and he knows he must rise to that calling. The woman is adjacent to him in the next lane. The stretch turns a corner to a signal-powered roundabout. He is in on right-hand side, which is also a straight-ahead lane. He has been aware of her for some time, and is amazed how easy it is to spot them now that Samuel L. Jackson has enlightened him. They are either dangerously cautious or headily reckless, have no sense of anticipation and enjoy an almost complete innocence of basic traffic laws, such as who has the right of way at a roundabout.

He is a little ahead of her now, and, in his periphery, notices her glancing over; a sure sign she wants to pull across. There is no way, however, that she will concede by asking or even signalling, so he just maintains a speed concurrent with hers, as Jackson taught him. It is the lane he always uses, because he wants to turn right, not now, but up ahead. It always sets him nicely into the queue, ahead of any dawdlers who might drift over at the last second. It's better to be in position early. He prefers it that way. At the very last moment, though, there comes the briefest flash of indicator, and she is swerving across his lane as though magnetised, on rails, to her destination.

"Don't yield, don't stop, don't ever let them win!" Jackson's biblical voice roars out from the radio. But from his position, he has no other option than to swerve in the same direction, following the curve of the roundabout alongside her - away from the road he wants to follow - or he will be shunted. Even with this last-ditch foresight, he is unable to prevent a clipping of his wing, and hears glass tinkle, down by the headlight. They continue to veer hard right on squealing tyres, like figure skaters attempting an intricate manoeuvre, before she finally peels away and roars off down the road. He is livid, chasing her down the country lane with Jackson's diatribe running, full-on and foul-mouthed over the airwaves, goading him on, as if he ever needed it. She now abides by the absolute speed limit, hasn't even acknowledged the slight contact. Hasn't once averted her gaze from the dead-ahead.

"Ohh, bitch," Jackson screams. "You in trouble now!"

Where the hedges grow high and the streetlamps run out, he forces her off the road; kills her by thrusting the tent peg through her stupid throat. The large boot swallows her up and, for a long, long time he giggles in the cold dark; hugging himself; tickled by perceived ironies. He knows now why he bought Unit Ten, the most tucked-away of the lot. He knows now why he chose twenty thousand square feet instead of ten. He knows now why Jackson was so keen for him to man-up and be ready. Some of these motors were big.

"Big-ass buggies," Sammy would no doubt say, as he chambered up a big-assed, long-barrelled revolver for some motherfucker to be on the wrong end of.

Let that spatially-challenged bitch be just one centimetre over the white lines he had painted on the driveway when he got home, too. Just let her.

At the top of the hill, a silver Volvo flashes its headlights and, in the time-honoured way, motions him through with textbook etiquette. He keeps his end of the bargain, kow-towing gratefully with a brief double-burst of headlights, then moves off to join the herd, watchful and bustling.