Short Fiction

I hadn't seen Mark for a while and if I'm honest, the reasons were entirely down to me. It was too upsetting, the extent to which he'd deteriorated, even though I had no idea then how bad it would get. Cowardly, really, but not enough on its own to justify staying away. That excuse came soon enough, and selfishly I took it. I'll explain: the medication he was on had turned him into a sex maniac and since work had let him go and he had nothing else to do all day, he'd been going round the family propositioning anyone female and over sixteen. It was embarrassing. My sister told me he'd been round hers and almost got her to wank him off under the pretext of helping him 'adjust' the stomach belt that held his treatment. He'd wrapped it around his old man, apparently, then got her to stick her hand around the toilet door. She twigged the moment her fingers closed around it.

"Felt like one of those corn dogs, warm out of the oven," she said, with a giggling shudder. But even the two shakes he'd got were encouragement enough. She had to pretend not to be in after that.

Don't get me wrong, we knew it wasn't him. With what he had hanging over him, well, it was enough to change anyone. We'd grown up together and always had a connection, deeper than family, throughout our adult lives. He was normal as toast before that.

We were at snooker one night. Cousins; our birthdays separated by the month of July. He couldn't drum his index and forefinger on the table. Something wouldn't click. Like a blockage, he said. He didn't know how long it had been like that.

"Daft sod," I answered. "It's wanker's cramp. Get your beer - number eleven's free."

They did tests, and found out it was young-onset Parkinson's. An old man's disease at thirty-bleeding three! But there were others like him, still young enough to be active. There was even a support group, 'Premature Parkies' or something. But really, it was just a matter of time before it took hold. First down one side, then up the other. How long? Ten months, ten years, they didn't know. Oh, and the possibility of dementia too. Fucking great.

Well, like I said I'm selfish. Who was going to be my snooker partner when he couldn't hold a cue?

I did his forms for him. Poor sod had no idea how to work the system. Didn't realise the equity card came before the disability badge; that you had to pretend to be a proper Joey before they'd part with so much as a milk token. I tore the first lot up after the predictable knock-back.

"Right, this is what you do. You shuffle, you fall over and you spill your tea. You roll your eyes and speak in tongues. Are you listening? Because you get sod-all otherwise. And Mark - brutal as it sounds - this isn't lead-swinging. It isn't going away or getting better. You might feel alright now, but they'll stick you right at the bottom of the sick table and then you'll find it harder to get out than Bolton Wanderers."

This new universe was anathema to him, and I wonder now whether it wasn't the beginning of his descent into a life he could not have dreamt of, where this underbelly thrived and was treated to a hand-wringing deference without ever being troubled by the prospect of physical, alleviating help. The support group they'd mentioned was a coach trip to Blackpool with a bunch of thirty-somethings, half of whom, he was convinced were simply putting it on.

"Pissheads who scrounge each others meds. With Temazzers or Valium, you're a god. It's messed up. I've got the missus and youngster to think about. It's not what I was expecting."

So for one reason and another I hadn't seen much of him, partly because of work; travelling about and that. Actually, I'll be honest: I was scared. It was too close to home. At first he used to mooch about all day, coming down ours and offering to do stuff - jobs about the house. He'd even bring his tool bag. 'Course back then he wasn't shaking so much, not by Ali standards, say. But there was a leg dragging behind and the odd tea mug tremor.

"What've they got you on now?" I asked one afternoon when I found him by the gate, smoking. "Those tablets that make you wee, still?"

"Morphine," he coughed, lifting up his jumper to reveal a gauzy sort of NHS bandolier for want of a better term. "Injects itself. I'm all needled up. It's pretty trippy to be honest. Shall I fix that fence?"

The missus had got wind of his sex-drive shenanigans and wasn't happy. She hadn't known Mark properly. Didn't know what a wag he could be and how he would do anything for anyone. She'd only seen the hollow-eyed chap who shuffled a bit when he walked and had a bus-driver's knob on his motability VW to help him turn corners.

"I don't want him round here while you're at work. He creeps me out."

Well, that was that. Maybe I should have been stronger, but by then I found out he'd pulled the stealth-wank trick round at my ex-wife's, where my two children lived. I think it was guidance he needed, or advice maybe, but I couldn't know about any of that. How could I? Besides, I was stuck in the middle. The women weren't happy. At least that's how I justify it now.

So seeing him this night was queer, because I had other things on my mind. The kids were growing up and Kerry was entering that rebellious teenager phase. She'd gone out against her mum's wishes, to smoke and drink round by the park. It was a time of night she used to be in by, curled up with Harry Potter. I got the phone call; I'm on my own, it’s hard to cope. I don't drive. Couldn't I go out and look for her?

So I left with some stabby words from the current spouse ringing in my ears. You'd never get into extended families if you knew the worst of it. You love 'em and all, but the constant having to justify and juggle. The battlements your four walls become; wondering what your kids think of you for it. Makes you question whether you wouldn't have been better off miserable with the same woman; at least there'd just be the one of them. But these issues were manifestly small if you came out from underneath once in a while to realise you were lucky. To have someone like Mark confirm it for you, in fact.

She wasn't there, so I drove on a whim up Sharpe Street, a scruffy bit of escarpment with derelict places for kids to smoke inside the doorways of and drink cheap cider. When we were a family we used to pass by with bags of old bread to get to the swans over by the lodge, where fishing pegs rounded out a hasty bit of suburban green-wash. I found her there, and that edge of defiance lasted for as long as it took to wind the window down and growl, "Get in."

She’s like me; an observer. Likes to visit other worlds to see what they're like. She rarely takes things too seriously, though. Always cops out before it gets real.

"I saw Uncle Mark over by the park," she said as I dropped her off with the stern-looking ex. "He seems - different."

"What time was this? Tell mum sorry and don't be lippy. You listening?" I sent her away with a peck on the cheek and an extra strong mint .

About nine-thirty she said, and that there were a few of them. It got me thinking: what was he doing out at that cold hour? I didn't want to go home just yet. She'd pissed me off, the missus, moaning like that. So I figured I'd stay out a while; let her have a few worries for a change. I pulled in to the adjacent stone pub and spotted him almost immediately, smoking by the wrought-iron gates with a couple of others, looking furtive. I knew what Kerry had meant now. It was one of two reasons I didn't just shout him over. The other? Well, I suppose he'd every right to be pissed off with me leaving him to get on with it like that. It wasn't really in the family spirit. We were a copious lot who knew help could be relied on when needed. But by the look of him, no-one was helping Mark. Christ - there was more than just me, I’d assumed someone else would take up the slack. Someone without wives, sisters and daughters to placate. So yes, I was a little apprehensive and like I said, he did look different and not in a good way.

That said, I was curious to know what was going on, so when they moved off I followed, keeping my distance. It was a mistake though, because almost as soon as they slipped from the globe-lit parade, into the darker terrain of old scorched flowerbeds and scabby hedges, I lost him. There was a flickering by the old bandstand, a lick of yellow that drew me on. They'd turned the ‘leccy off down there and it seemed to have fallen into disuse. Even groups of teenagers had floated off for pastures new. There was no atonal singing, that's how I knew. No howls of obscenity mixed in. Their absence found it secluded and creepy, way too quiet. But, as I negotiated stacks of old tyres and paint-smeared MDF, bits of barbed wire and broken glass, I sensed a hand behind these barricades of urban junk. It was almost too unbroken, too forbidding. Something didn't want you to come this way and I wasn't having that. He'd gotten in there somehow and I would follow.

I'd probably have given up, discouraged by the weather and bottle shards in the squelchy mud. I'd gotten this far with only a Bic lighter to illuminate the few feet in front, and my thumb was burnt by its cheapness. I wasn't even sure what bit of the park I was in any more, so I stopped to light up a fag. Its glow showed a rusty spring at eye level, attached to what looked like a car bonnet, dug into the ground at an angle. I puffed harder and saw that it was just a matter of levering out the metal pegs. So I used a branch, and suddenly the whole thing sprang back like one of those up-and-over garage doors, chomping foliage behind it. Again, someone had gone to a bit of trouble, and I knew that only this piece of fortunate timing, the fag and the minute to think, had helped me. Fate was a word strongly in mind by now, but I don’t know why I was acting so strangely; why I was travelling so far out of my comfort zone and for what.

At least it was easier to navigate now, because someone had taken pains to revive the lime-dug path, laid years ago by community offenders and re-carpet this swamp with it. Luckily for me, whatever strange native called this home had lined it with rocks too, white and semi-luminous, offering a shade more guidance than stumbling.

"From the bowling green," I remember thinking. Some bod had licked the pencil that subtracted them from the orderly world of committee minutes. 'Rockery stones missing – toilets stopped up - bandstand graffiti.' Then, all at once, I found myself at the rear of a bare thicket, through which I finally spotted a broken sea of figures. The yellow I’d spotted was a bonfire, and it launched their twisted shadows back through the brush. Two things, like a double thresh of drumbeats rang my senses. The feral snarling of combatants, cheered on by low, excited voices, and a steam of human sweat rising from the centre. The bandstand refracted all noise, and so it was easy to part those soundless bushes and wander down to the crowd, whose attention was more than firmly focused on the makeshift arena.

What I saw terrified me. "Our kid!" I shouted, breaking into a run. We always called each other that - more like brothers than cousins. He couldn’t fail to realise who it was. "Our kid! Jesus man – what you doin'?"

He had hold of a lad centre-stage, panning him around the neck and face while the crowd milled around the edges, baying. There was a smell in the air like vomit, and a wave of chanting resonated between my ears. I was in shock; reacting only to what I could see and hear. A bombardment of the senses; too much to take in all at once.

I gazed back at their awed faces. Hair plastered to foreheads and cheeks slick with saliva; gleaming, demigod eyes upturned in a unity of rapture. Strange fish - all shapes, like a devil’s retinue. It was sick, that’s the only way I can describe it, and I became desperate to escape its pull and regain my able-bodiedness, so I bounded up the iron steps and across the leaf-mulched auditorium, grabbing him by the collar. He looked around, and there was just this expression of gormless recognition on his face - shame and pride, all welled up in the welts under his cheekbones; at the sucked-in corners of his mouth. Jesus!

"You’ve made a mess of him!" I cried, pulling them apart. Now the crowd thinned a little, some withdrawing at the commotion and the blaze behind the bandstand fired him like a kiln. Mark had always been scrawny, a streak of piss built for marathons. A strong breeze could have blown him over. But the winking spotlights at the dome's apex were blotted out when he straightened up.

"Bloody hell," I breathed as he faced me, quietly defiant. That was the difference - he’d bulked up. Not medication pounds, as I might have suspected, but gym weight. He wiped blood from his chin with the lap of his t-shirt, exposing firm obliques and a ripped stomach. When it came down again, the words ‘ROID RAGE’ flattened across his chest in a fading, 'A-Team' stencil font. I wanted to laugh. I did. It was all too surreal.

"Mess? What mess? We're just warming up!" he spat out a tooth and I looked down to see the bloke he’d been laying into was some sort of gimp. A lump-headed, hare-lipped freak with torn clothes and a club foot.

"Mark! What the hell?"

The crowd had stopped short when I launched myself up, fearing a bust and that there might be more of us. But now, low murmurs gurgled on the cusp of outrage. Balled fists waved in my direction. There was a thump of boots behind, and I felt a rude tug on my jacket. "Oi, wanker!"

"It’s alright, Dave. He’s with me. Timeout, eh? Back in five."

Mark pushed me to the edge of the stage and a deep scratch flared in the garish light, zipper-like, from collar bone to temple. The club-foot hadn't done it. He didn't have it in him.

"This isn’t the first time." It wasn't a question. I was panting hard, yet he was hardly breathing. The fire had congealed a sweat of terror on me that glistened like lard.

"Forfeit!" The prostrate gimp snuffed through one crusted nostril. "I win!"

"My arse!" the lad Dave snorted back. "Intermission - you heard. So get puffing on your Ventolin, Quasimodo. This ain’t done."

There was an offended rumble, but none of the bystanders spoke up and we dropped back from the breeze-blocked promontory they’d been leaning over to sit in the defiant glow of a brazier, perched by a rare undamaged bench. Back in the day, when we played snooker together, they’d burn away in the ashtray when one of us was playing, so we always shared a fag. He passed me a smouldering butt now and I'd already taken two long drags before realising that a harsh clod of skunk had filled my lungs, along with the tobacco. I bent over, coughing it out into the night.

"By hell! You could have warned me!"

He chuckled wryly. "Bud’s like candy floss now. Pills are where it's at. Pills and powders; anything in an ampoule." He smiled to himself, a dirty rictus of grim humour.

"What's this all about?" I asked, gesturing to the crowd. "It's organised isn't it?"

"Got back in with the support group," he said. "The only ones who'd have me, it turns out."

"The med-scroungers?" I said, wincing at the implied jibe. "The Blackpool lot?"

"Yeah, among others. How the mighty fall, eh? But it's given me something to look forward to."

I was in shock. "Meeting up in dark spots like this? Getting busted up? For what?"

He grinned like a carnival clown. "You remember those videos - Bumfights? We used to have a giggle at 'em after the pub. Winos scrapping. Filmers giving 'em with booze, you know. Maybe a place to sleep if they maim up one of their own badly enough. Popular as hell."

"Mark. I'm an accountant. What am I supposed to know about any of this?" The weed had reared up its dissociative head, watching me speak the words. The fear had come to settle in my belly with those few unwitting puffs. The last thing I needed.

"Same sort of thing. Except disabled." There was that look of low cunning he’d always had. We called it mischief back then. Now it meant something else.

"And the prize?" I felt like a child in the middle of spilled conspiracies. Santa was dead; murdered by elves. Who was next - Bambi?

"What do you think?" he shrugged. "Meds. Uppers, downers, you name it. And status too; a name for yourself." A flask came out from somewhere under the bench and he unscrewed it to pour out steaming black coffee.

"You're not shaking quite so much."

"Comes and goes. Much worse on the right. I’ve had to learn to use the other."

He was pumped up on all sorts, I could see, even in this gloom. Nobody possessed pupils that big. He couldn’t keep still, his eyes everywhere, foot tapping like a metronome. He took a swift gulp then handed me the cup, noticing my hesitation.

"Don't worry. It ain't catching." A semi-sneer exposed the missing teeth and reopened a cracked lip. It bled down his chin in a thin tributary.

"You tosser. Do you think I want to be awake all night? I've got work in the morning."

"Alright champ?" the Dave character inquired, appearing at his side. "Need another shot?" He was an ugly, skin-headed bastard, dressed top to toe in leather like something out of the Matrix. We ignored each other intently.

"Not yet, pal - in a minute. Family business."

"Shot of what?" I demanded to know, eyeing Dave suspiciously as he melted back into the shadows. I'd seen this hard knock before. It would come to me.

"Not what you think," Mark said. "He's alright, so long as I’m earning." A crooked frown appeared. "Cortisone - won it off some bloke with spasms ...summat Dystrophy."

"Muscular," I murmured, vaguely appalled. "Who is he then, this 'Dave'? What's he got on you?"

"He's my manager, if you must know. Pays me forty per cent and makes sure everybody stumps up. Surprising how reluctant some of these droolers are to part with their stash, and I'd got ripped off a few times. It's a fair arrangement."

"Forty per cent of what?"

He didn't answer, taking instead a last pull on the joint before flicking it into some trees. "Doctors give out all sorts to the likes of us; not just for the disease. We’re depressed - who wouldn’t be? None of your poncy Prozac either. Old school. Mogadon, 'Ludes, you name it." He stared straight ahead, where the flames beckoned. "Why? To keep us subdued; away from their door." He stood up. "The only difference between them and you is the stethoscope. I've learned their secret, and yours. It's this: Nobody likes to be confronted by their own mortality."

He'd hit the nail on the head, and I blinked back sharp tears. Not for him though. I knew what it was, had done all along. But I couldn’t face it. Couldn't face not facing it. Dying was for heroes; I had too much invested in life. Flat-screen telly, Turbo diesel, Disneyworld.

It came to me in a flash, or maybe I was that desperate to deflect the momentary onus. "Sit down a minute more. Dave's a dealer. I’ve seen him outside the Lancastrian with his pool cue, touting skag at passing trade. No sweeter production line, eh?"

"Don’t fucking judge me," he growled. "I'm a king here, not a leper. No-one looks at me funny. No-one shouts: 'give us a song, Shakey' from across the road."

"Yeah, I get it. But how do you maintain the supply? Aren't you on a prescribed amount? Don’t they get suspicious of you turning up every five minutes?"

He shook his head. "I'm a walking dispensary. The golden goose or whatever." He mimed the strapping on of the familiar bandolier, like a gunslinger. "Morphine, remember? - on draught. All I have to do is rip this once in a while." He tore at his vest and simpered convincingly. "'It's leaked out Doc, all over me kecks.'"

I shaded my eyes, but there was no respite from his firebrand gaze. "No-one bats an eyelid down the surgery. I'm accident-prone, aren't I? Can't hardly move some days without getting banged up. Besides, the NHS is a joke. You can get away with a lot more than you think with the right contacts and a blank pad of 'scrips."

The torn fabric of his t-shirt revealed ribs, barred by skeins of livid bruising, culminating at the nipple. It reminded me of that ice-cream I liked, shot through with cherry. The weed did a momentary search and tasted the name. 'Spagnola'. He'd been Spagnola'd. I stifled a mad giggle. "You didn't do that on a Welsh dresser though, eh? Or lose those teeth on a door, you marmot." I was still in shock, but angry now too. "Mark, come on. This isn't you. What about Jacqui and the littl'un?"

The fire picked out a wry upturn to his scabbed mouth. A smirk of pride lurking. "Kicked me out. Couldn't keep up. Who wants a husband who can do it five times a night but needs help getting on and off? I see the lad now and then. He hardly knows me."

"Oh, man," I sighed, shaking my head. At least it explained all the sex-pesting. A pharmacological fire raged within him, Class A. He was a fuse, palpably burning; a walking law of diminishing returns. He couldn't sustain it, that much was obvious.

"So I'm doing this while I still can. For him. Her too, if you like."

"Doing what, Mark? How does this help?"

He didn't answer, but threw the cold dregs of coffee into a nearby bush and rose to his feet.

"If you had the timer running. If you knew what was coming - and I've seen it, believe me. Blokes you'd swear were in their seventies who are only forty-odd. Shitting the bed and drooling their food out..."

I wanted badly to hold him but there was still a dividing line, solid as the bandstand, strong as its ironwork. "I know, mate. I…"

"You don't," he grimaced. "You're safe in your three-bed semi and I'm cursed. If you'd seen what I've seen, you'd understand. Make yourself alive before you’re dead." His finger pinned my soul. "You're the man with the numbers. You've got the smarts. You know what I am. A whatsit - Pariah." The mispronunciation made him no less knowing. "People in my own family, scared to be near me. People like you."

It had gotten bitterly, scathingly cold and I couldn't keep the tremor out of my voice. "It’s not like that, Mark. I’ve got…"

"…problems of your own, yeah. Haven’t we all?"

We’d never argued like this before, never had anything serious enough to divide us. If we had I might have been able to confront it more easily, to handle it with him. Now he was on this lairy circuit of cripples, beating up on each other. It was ghoulish and piteous and I hated him for it. Hated myself even more.

"I don't believe this, it's wrong. You've got to get help."

His eyes widened, and the calm behind them was worse than any anger. "You don't know the half. There's this one boy with arms like a babby, no-one can’t get near him - he fucks you up with his feet like Bruce Lee. We call him 'The Thalidomiser'. A big Downs lad from Huddersfield will fight him the weekend. Strong like Superman, but slow like the Hulk. Easy money, I reckon. The mong's toast."

He moved by me like a ghost. "Look, it was nice seeing you. I’ve got to get back. Dave won’t like it if we have to toss this. He’s got a fair bit riding."

He shrugged away my protests with a boyish wink, which just for a moment immortalised the old Mark, as though we were lads again, twatting around on a tyre swing, being best man at each other's weddings, sharing a cigarette at the snooker club. "Go on, bean counter. Your missus'll be waiting."

I fell into a long, stoned sleep that night. Misshapen hands placed me into that arena to be punch-bagged, not by the cousin I owed so much to but by his ilk, who had foregone their dignity too for a taste of youth and vigour. To live again and scream out with blood on their tongues. To hasten along the burning of that fuse instead of gawping fearfully at it and to go out with a bang instead of a whimper. Who could blame them?

I didn't see Mark again after that, and within three years more he was gone. The disease claimed him with a ferocity that surprised even the doctors. His last months were spent sedated and trussed for his own protection, with full-on shakes and added senility for good measure. They took all his teeth out at the end. Ten years from start to finish. He was right; the timer was running. I heard all this at the funeral. Their cheeks were cold when I kissed them, and there was mention, at the service, of his love of snooker, but not mine. I hadn't expected it, anyway. His lad deserved more, but I didn't have time to be a godfather. There were enough of my own to worry about. Someone would take up the slack.

Four years on he came to see me. Eighteen, a shocking facsimile of his beanpole dad. Same crooked smile; same slant of cunning on an otherwise angelic face. Mark had gotten enough together, it transpired, to leave a shitload in trust that his birthday had just unlocked.

"Dad told me to come once the money had landed. He said you’d advise me. Stop the taxman getting his hands on it. He said you knew all the ropeholes."

"Loopholes," I smiled. "Come in, we've a lot to talk about."