Shattered

It was dark outside, and without electricity it was just as dark inside the suburban house. There was nothing I could think of doing but lying down on the sofa and trying to sleep. I thought it would work: I had drunk a large amount and shared a big joint. But although I was far from alert, I didn't feel at ease. I made an effort to close my mind to thoughts forcing their way in.

***

I heard someone walking down the passage and into the kitchen. Had I slept a little? The someone was Craig--I recognised his ape-like form even in the dark. I watched and heard him opening the fuse box and flipping a switch. At once, the house lit up and the television came on and I had to close my eyes against the glare. When I opened them again Craig was entering the lounge.

"You're reading that magazine upside-down," he exclaimed. No I wasn't. What I was doing was putting the tv-guide which I had found lying on my belly back onto the coffee table. I pointed out that I didn't know where the fuse box was, and that the last several hours had been rather dark in the house.

"Well you seemed to enjoy the magazine you were reading upside-down," he replied. There was no use arguing with him. He left the lounge. Looking down the passage from my position on the sofa I saw Cindy emerging from Craig's bedroom and making for the bathroom directly across. I couldn't think of any reason to leave the sofa, so I stayed there, sitting up and waiting for the buzz to leave my head. I picked up the tv-guide, making sure to hold it the right way up, and flipped through the pages. In the meantime, Cindy finished in the bathroom and entered the study. I could hear her speaking into the phone, but I couldn't hear what she was saying.

Before long, Craig let a subdued Cindy out of the front door and gate, and I could watch her through the lounge window standing on the curb, and after a few minutes, entering a car that pulled up there. She hadn't spoken to me since emerging from the bedroom. She had been the last guest from the party that afternoon, besides me. I was staying the night. The other guests had all left at once when it had become clear that Craig was fucking Cindy in his bedroom. One of the guests, Mary, had left in tears, supported on each side by a friend. I'd watched her earlier: her delicate face, framed by wisps of blonde hair, had glowed with excitement while Craig had flirted with her.

"The guests, your guests, got bored and left," I told Craig when he came back to join me in the lounge.
"Well it's a good thing you had that magazine to read upside-down, otherwise you might have been bored too."
"It was dark. I couldn't read."
"Didn't seem to stop you."
I told him that I thought Cindy was quite ugly.
"She has a nice arse," he said. And then the the gate bell rang, so we both turned around and looked through the window to see a car parked at the gate and a dark figure getting back into it.

The dark figure turned out to be Grant. There was something about him I didn't like, but I hadn't spent much time with him and couldn't exactly say what it was. Craig told him about Cindy.
"Not the best looking one," said Grant.
"She has a nice arse," said a grinning Craig.
Grant said I looked tired. I told him that I probably drank too much during the day.
"I found him lying on the sofa reading a magazine upside-down," Craig added.
"There was no fucking light," I groaned. I didn't feel like explaining.
"Reading a magazine upside-down in the dark. No wonder you look so tired," laughed Grant.
There wasn't much more conversation. Grant ended it. With over-excited eyes almost popping out, he jingled his keys and called: "Let's go vandalise!"

My head was numb. If my head had been fine, I would have surely been repelled by that night's activities, but with a numb head I was indifferent. Grant had come in his mother's green Golf. He had no driver's license. He stalled the car on every slight uphill slope that he had to pull off on. He took us in the car to our high school, a five minute drive through quiet black streets lined with oak trees. There were no street lights there and we saw no people, only free standing houses behind closed gates and some cars parked on the curbs. At the school, a brick perimeter wall was being built. We stopped at a stack of bricks and gathered as many as we could into the car. We were all set.

Breaking car windows by throwing bricks at them from a moving car was more difficult than I would have thought. If we did hit a window, more often than not the brick would simply deflect away without breaking anything. Sometimes we missed and hit doors or bonnets which would leave small dents. But when it did work, when we managed to hit a window and break it, the glass instantly turned opaque as it crumbled into a mosaic flashing outwards from the point of impact. Even to my numb mind it was a beautiful sight. Compared to Craig my hit rate was poor--I didn't feel very energetic and had very little motivation for breaking windows. He performed zealously: he hung his body far out the window of the green golf, pulled his brick-throwing hand back, aimed at the target with his other hand and released the brick with a fast slinging action. He pumped his fist and shouted out whenever he got a hit. One of his bricks deflected straight back to Grant's mother's green Golf. Grant swerved wildly; Craig nearly fell out the window. No damage was done. We laughed hard after that. Even I laughed hard. But after laughing hard, I found myself wishing that Craig had fallen out.

When we ran out of bricks we went home again. Grant soon left and I was glad about that. Craig and I watched a movie on television and then went to bed.

I lay on the same sofa that I was lying on earlier that day when the electricity went out. I was tired. But in the silence of the suburban night, in that dark house set back from the street, still numb from the party and its drinks and smoke, I couldn't sleep. I was disturbed. And after lying on my back waiting too long for sleep to come, I gave up and opened my eyes. Opening them was too easy. I sat up. "What is it?" I demanded of my frustrated self. I knew what it wasn't: driving around oak tree-lined streets throwing bricks at parked cars didn't bother me much. I knew it was no good thing that such repulsive behaviour didn't bother me, but I couldn't lie to myself, not if I wanted to get some sleep. Only one thing truly bothered me that day and prevented me from sleeping: it was an image, an expression of desperately gasping for air on Mary's face, the expression someone has when their chest is being crushed by a sickening force that won't let them inhale, and it came over her suddenly when she realised that Craig, who just moments ago was sitting right next to her, flirting with her so openly, sharing smiles with her, raising her hopes relentlessly higher... That Craig had just taken Cindy to his bedroom, locked the door, and was now without any doubt proceeding to fuck her. I had a crush on Mary. That's why I couldn't sleep.