A trip to sea world

A trip to Sea World

I.
Trying to escape the rain, a mangy pigeon with one eye missing flew
quickly from a tall beech tree towards the window of a run down
Victorian house. The house had boards over the windows and a peeling
grey front door that looked as if it had been only recently reopened.
The bird had watched two men enter the building just a few minutes
before and had then seen one leave, the urgency of his rapid retreat
obvious as he splashed unconcerned through a puddle that had collected
at the grate of a drain cover. The bird landed in the living room with
a flurry of soggy feathers. A few feet away a mans' hand twitched at
the disturbance. Slowly the rest of the man stirred sending the
dishcloth bird into a frenzy of flapping, bumping off the peeling walls
and sending the bare broken bulb spinning in circles. The commotion
brought the man hurriedly out of his stupor; he sat up wincing and
baffled and tried to ward off the grimy bird as it swooped towards him.
His limbs were slow and heavy and the man got a face full of feathers
and a taste of decay.

As the man spat the bird finally found the way out and flew back to the
birch tree where it stayed for a long time, staring at the house from
its remaining yellow eye. The man looked blindly around him in stoned
astonishment. His initial blanket panic of waking gradually quietened
down and an inexplicable sense of guilt was now welling up beside it.
He licked his dry lips with a swollen tongue and felt the back of his
head. An angry swelling lump sent white pain through his head and face
at the touch. His mouth tasted of cigarettes and ferment and his limbs
seemed to be those of someone else's. The man winced again as he probed
the lump further and the pain seemed to wake him a little.

Putting a juddering hand to the floor he was, for the second time that
day, repelled by the damp fragrant paisley carpet on which he was
sprawled. The walls around him rose up like those of a buckled
cathedral. Here and there a floral pattern winked out at him from
beneath the bad paint job. To his left was a mattress, its swollen
stuffing spilling out of the mildewed cover like some mythical sea
creature. He would remember later that his first conscious thought was
that the beige and brown patterned cover would have been very groovy in
the late 60's. His eyes wouldn't focus properly making the room take on
an aquatic blur as he tried to make sense of it all.

As the throbbing in his ears abated the faint hiss of rain made him
turn to the window. He looked vaguely over to where the pigeon had
flown in but the window was boarded up apart from a thin strip of muggy
light two feet from the moon-cratered ceiling. Turning around he
touched his face and felt the two day stubble against his numbed hand.
The sensation sent guilt seeping through him but he could not explain
the cause of this feeling. Steadily rising and walking with toddler
steps over to the door the man tripped on an old pair of cords. They
had been on the floor for so long that they had set like navy papier
mache.

The sight of the trousers sent his rubbery hands into his pockets
looking for something that might give him a clue as to why he was here.
His front pockets had been pulled inside out and the back pockets
contained nothing but a return ticket to Milton Keynes. Surprisingly it
was the guilt rather than the fear that swelled from a background
feeling into an all-pervasive vibration. The man stepped to the door
with determined speed, feeling the need for fresh air and an
explanation.

The hallway, as equally run down as the living room, was empty apart
from an inexplicably shiny silver kettle sitting on the floor. He
picked it up and stared at the warped image confronting him. His nose
was bulbous in the curved surface, with purple veins from too much
drink spreading from the corners too the tip. His ears stretched back
to Spock-like points and his eyebrows wormed away like brunette
spaghetti. Looking at his reflection the man tried to tidy himself up;
brushing down his damp jeans, trying to pull the wrinkles out of his
white T-shirt and smoothing back his greasy hair. "Eh?" he commented to
the reflection, and his voice felt foreign in his throat. Then a memory
flashed across his consciousness: walking past a butchers' curved
window, his face stretching and reforming over the slabs of bloody
meat. The memory took him by surprise and he took a deep breath,
placing his still shaky hand on the wall before regaining his composure
and stepping to the front door.

II.
Tom, a thirty five year old unemployed man walked awkwardly down a
sodden crumbling back street of Bristol. He was thinking of the time
his boy Harry had run up to him on porky little legs, with a bright
eyed smile and a clenched fist outstretched towards him. He had opened
his hand and shown his prize - a dead mouse - to his father. Tom smiled
weakly as the memory brought back the feelings of revulsion and
swelling pride that this offering had produced.

It was three pm and already the sky was fading, the light seeming thin
and watery. Dirty orange streetlights were starting to flicker. Passing
by the row of terraced houses to his left the man noticed a bare room
with the floorboards splintering skyward as though some giant dog had
been searching for a bone. It was the sort of place where somebody
might find any number of bones, Tom mused to himself, and he looked
over his shoulder again. As he strained to look behind him, a pigeon
darted out from the doorway of the house in front of him and he looked
round with a jump. Tom's image reflected in the bird's clouded eye as
climbed skywards, sliding of the milky surface like oil.

Entering into a smoky pub; the Black Swan, Tom was suddenly conscious
of both his colour and his wallet. Looking around the low ceilinged but
cavernous room, with saggy walls edged by a high-tide line of nicotine
and mould, a group of mostly West Indian men sat on faded purple bar
stools, playing darts or talking at the bar. The air had a carnivorous
feel to it thought Tom as he walked stiffly to the bar. He guiltily
relieved to find that the bar tender was white. They exchanged
nods.
"Yes mate, Wot can I get you?" he asked through flakey lips and a
strong West Country accent.
"Pint of the black please pal" said Tom and was acutely aware as a few
faces turned around at the word.
The barman did not react however, and poured out a stormy pint of
Guinness. It wasn't that he was racist, thought Tom, it was just that
he had never really met any black people. His home town in
Buckinghamshire couldn't really regard itself as multi-cultural. It was
just that it felt like he had walked into a different country.
He pulled up a stool and propped himself up on his puppet arms.
"Bastard weather" the barman remarked friendlily
"Yeah it's really made my day"
"Been a tough one has it?"
Tom weighed up in his mind for a moment whether he really did want to
tell this stranger his problems or not and decided that for once he
did. This anonymous stranger probably wouldn't care either way
anyway.
He told him about how his estranged wife of eleven years Sarah and ten
year old boy had moved to Bristol thirteen months ago, omitting the
details of how his wife had called him "a useless shite of a man" and
had left before he could even get up from his armchair. He told him how
he had been unable to trace them for several months and so had missed
his sons' birthday a year ago today; something he was determined not to
let happen again. The problem was that he had lost his job shortly
after they had left and he now had only a return ticket and ?40 to pay
for food, a bed (there was no chance of Sarah letting him stay at her
place), plus a present for his boy Harry. He spoke his sentences in
short sprints letting his problems dash from his mouth one after the
other with quick gulps of stout as punctuation.

He finished his story and his pint together then looked up at the
barman in an expectant manner. The barman gazed stonily back and
said
"That's two pound ten, mate" and Tom realised how often the man must
hear such stories. He paid up and stood to leave. As he did so, a man
of indeterminate race smiled at him, obviously having overheard at
least some of the story. Tom noticed a tattoo of a Viking warship on
his black haired forearm, and a mouth full silver and gold.

Tom closed the door and pulled his soggy denim jacked closer to him
against the damp October afternoon, the rain had diminished but not
stopped. He took three aimless steps, at first unsure of which
direction to take. He looked at his watch. There were only two hours
before the shops shut and he still had to get a present for Harry. He
decided to go back to the train station and get directions from
there.

A new resolve took over him and he knew what he would do. He could
survive sleeping rough for a night or two and a few days without booze
would do him good. He would spend all the money he had on a really good
present, maybe just keep enough for a shot of Dutch Courage before he
reached Sarah's house. He set off in a determined stride with the first
clear plan he had had for months. He could change things if he only had
faith in his ability to do so.

Then door of the pub open and closed quietly a few metres behind him
and Tom looked back to the smiling man who had emerged. He began
walking over and the streetlights flashed across his metal teeth.

III.
Tom stepped out from the doorway and down the rain slicked steps.
Memories began to emerge and he knew he had been on this street just
recently; the orange flickering light which stained the evening air,
the oily puddle by the curb, the torn up floorboards in the house to
his left. He had been with someone though? he tried to remember who it
had been, but he could conjure nothing but an indistinct mumbling blur.
The man, yes it had been a man, had been talking animatedly about
something, whilst leading him toward the house from which he had just
emerged.

As Tom traced his steps back, a dingy black doorway, with an unlit sign
above it came into view. Tom strained his eyes through the weak watery
light and made out "the Black Swan" in peeling letters and his
red-rimmed eyes flashed and his face contorted.

"Vikings" he said, the word forced through clenched teeth.

IIII.
Tom reached the train station and slumped down on a cast iron bench on
platform twelve, his limbs heavy and his mind returning to the dark
place from which he had earlier awoke. He watched some lank pigeons
playing chicken with each other, swooping down to take a bite at a
sandwich which was laying in the track. They descended from the
Victorian steel bars which crisscrossed the high roof, occasionally
swooping out at either end of the station but then circling back in as
the heavy raindrops hit them. Tom sagged into himself, his shoulders
down and forward, his hands in his lap and his skinny neck projecting
forward.

He watched numbly as a particularly manky pigeon made the sandwich
dive. Despite the bedraggled state of the bird feathers it moved with
ease as it tucked back its wings and fell from the sky. The bird
disappeared into the trench of the rail track and the emerged lifting
the sandwich for a moment before it fell from its beak back onto the
track. Tom's vision was clouding a storm-sea grey around the edge of
his vision as he watched the pigeon circle around, preparing for
another go. The concussion had lingered in his mind and had now
reawakened, making the echoing noises of the station ricochet around
his head like whale song. He was only vaguely aware of the one thought
"how do they pull out just before they hit the bottom?"

Time seemed to be stretching out for Tom, a salty sticky wave of quiet
pain vibrated out from the lump on his head but he was now so tired
that he barely noticed. His was barely aware that he was slowly sagging
down horizontally, his head moving closer and closer to the cold metal
bench. Through slits Tom saw the beautiful petrol colours on the bird's
tatty wings as it made a low pass towards the sandwich. He noticed how
the tail feathers were making tiny adjustments, how one oversized toe
on its left foot was twice as big as the rest and how its cloudy right
eye looked like a smoky orb he had once seen a fortune teller use when
he was a little boy. He stared at the useless eye as the bird sailed
past: the station around him slipping over it like a warped movie
screen: the ornate bench on which he was sat; the sandstone archways
and the marble floor; the young family nearby, huddled joyfully around
a pram and the elderly couple with matching tweed jackets. And himself,
with sagging eyes and a goldfish mouth, his arms by his sides. A bead
of light reflected out of the corner of the bird's eye and just before
Tom's head hit the bench his eyes drifted in the direction from which
it came. A train was moving at immense speed along the track opposite
him. Then his eyes closed and his head hit the metal.

The sound of the train's scream as something came between the wheel and
the rail made the waiting passengers look over. Tom's eyes snapped open
and flicked up then down as each carriage roared by. A row of faces
were briefly illuminated in the windows, the light interior looking
almost heavenly. Then it was gone and a few stained feathers rose up
from the track in the backdraught of its movement.

Panting slightly and emerging back into conscious he stood up. A few
people were staring at him and murmuring to each other, but most people
trying not to look at the mangled and unrecognisable collection of
feathers and flesh that littered the track. Two boys, presumably
brothers, were morbidly inching each other forward to look at the
bloody mess with gleeful, fearful expressions on their faces.

Tom stared at the two boys and their mother who was stood smoking over
a pram. He stood and looked around for the exit.