Bloom
By Noo
- 1194 reads
Bloom
When Jamie woke up that October morning, the bruise had appeared on his right bicep, large and livid and he had absolutely no idea how he’d got it. He looked in the mirror, twisting slightly to the side, so he could get the angle better. It was a dark flower of purple and vermillion, a bloom of broken blood. As he got dressed after his shower, he was very careful putting his shirt on.
Going to work on the train later, he could feel the bruise nagging against the seat. He put his headphones in to block out the need to communicate with the woman he vaguely knew who had come to sit opposite him.
And so the day went, like all the others. The IT job, the pint after work, the pretty lame banter. The basic shiftlessness. He was thirty two for god’s sake, working in a bank, living the single life in a box apartment – his own albeit – earning an ok amount and at least not one of the burgeoning numbers of man-boys still living with their parents. But overall, he had a sense of coasting and he questioned whether the life he was living was really what success felt like. The bruise hurt all day, tender and petulant.
Later that evening when he was back home, Jamie examined it again. It seemed to have more solidity than before. Its shape was more distinct, more owning of him. He tidied his dinner plate and cup away in the galley kitchen and suddenly, weirdly he got the sharp, disinfectant smell of the spot cream a sort of former friend had used as a kid. There was no question, he had placed it instantly and precisely.
And he was pulled back to 1995, November, early evening. Fourteen again, listening to Oasis in his bedroom with skinny Liam Ferrell. Heads down, staring at the knees of their jeans, side by side on the bed settee. Passing comment every so often on Noel Gallagher’s guitar prowess and Liam Gallagher’s swagger. The silence in between what they said couldn’t really be seen as companionable and Jamie wondered whether it was actually because his name was Liam that he hung out with him at all. He didn’t even really like him. They had little in common, apart from catching the school bus from the same stop and a chance hearing of Oasis blasting out of Liam’s Walkman as he’d taken his headphones off to adjust them.
Damn, Jamie would have talked to anyone about Oasis then. Even Liam off the council estate with the zits and the slightly acrid odour, barely masked by cheap aftershave. So there they were, not for the first time, reading meaning into the banal lyrics and nodding their messy bowl haircuts in time to the music.
An unstated line had been crossed when Liam had turned round to look at him. Jamie had moved back a little and pinched him. Hard and long on his right bicep. Showing beneath his teeshirt sleeve, the weal had come up instantly, red and accusatory. He’d pinched him because he wanted to. Because he could. For no reason at all. Liam left without saying anything and without looking back.
Jamie saw him a few times after that - waiting outside the music block at school, reading a magazine without looking up and as though his life depended on it. A few times, walking by with his friends, the other kids, Jamie had thought about going up to him to apologise, but he didn’t really know what it was he could say and in truth he wasn’t really that sorry because it hadn’t really meant anything in the first place.
Until now, Jamie hadn’t thought about Liam for years and hadn’t come across anyone from back in the day who’d heard from him either and so opening his laptop, he decided to search on his name. And there he was. Liam Ferrell born July, 28th, 1981, died 11th October, 2013, his body found at the bottom of a stairwell in a block of flats in the city centre. There was little about his life between these dates, but the loneliness gaped through in the names of the five people who’d attended his funeral. Cremated yesterday on the day before the bruise appeared on Jamie’s arm.
Jamie shivered. He hadn’t even done him the service of remembering him. It took him a long time to get to sleep that night.
The next day was Saturday and having woken up with the idea growing in his head, Jamie knew what he would do. This morning, the bruise was beginning to fade with a slight yellowing like a winter sun rising sullenly from its violet centre. Walking up the high street, he put up his parka hood against the cold.
As he entered the tattoo studio, he pathetically checked with the tattoo artist that it would be alright and felt little reassurance from the man’s shrugging shoulders. But he sat in the chair in any case as the bruise was traced over and became permanent. He focused on the pain in his arm as the tattoo formed, birthed into a bruise flower; cruel and beautiful. His thoughts wandered. Black-hole like, we consume the things we do to other people and these things linger in our stomachs, bleeding.
His flow of thinking was interrupted by music from the radio and (of course it would be), Oasis, Wonderwall, words drifting across the years in Liam Gallagher’s up for it sneer, “There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how. Because maybe you’re gonna be the one that saves me.”
As the song faded, Jamie looked up and captured infinity between two mirrors reflecting each other in the dark room. Moving his head slightly, he caught sight of a thin, spotty boy coming in to the shop; but when he looked again, he realised he must have been mistaken. No-one was there. He looked down at his arm and against the backdrop noise of the tattoo machine’s insistent hammering, he couldn’t see any more where blood ended and ink began.
At the last minute, as it had come to an end, Jamie asked the man to make a final addition to the design. To mark Liam’s passing – a brand of a memory. Inked on his skin round and round the flourishing bruise flower. Both punishment and reminder. You’ve got to look after your ghosts. You’ve got to look after your ghosts.
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Comments
Wow - this is a fantastic
Wow - this is a fantastic piece. I hope you post more soon. Welcome to ABC!
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I love this this story, and
I love this this story, and the title is so evocative.
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I'm with insert all the way,
I'm with insert and Philip all the way, this really is excellent writing and a great story. Welcome from me too.
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Great story and very much
Great story and very much enjoyed.
Jenny.
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This is such a poignant,
This is such a poignant, chilling story full of beautifully observed detail. Really look forward to reading more of your work.
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Hello Noo,
Hello Noo,
What a great introductory piece this is. Really enjoyed it and hope to see more of your work on the fabulous site that is ABC Tales. Whoops, nearly forgot...Welcome from me too.
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really enjoyed this story
Thanks for putting this story on. For me, it was sparingly written, but the more beautiful for that.
josh
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This would have to be one of
This would have to be one of the best short stories I've read in ages. And I'm not, even slightly, an Oasis fan. The only thing that would have made it better is you'd used Blur instead :) Great writing, well done!
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I liked this
and thought the ending, 'you've got to look after your ghosts' was just right. Well done.
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wonderwall and all. Well done
wonderwall and all. Well done. Fabulous. Fantastic. The kind of story I wish I'd wrote, but don't have a ghost of a clue how.
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