Sliced

“Bread Man’s at it again!”

Donny the toilet attendant stood in the door way to the train station’s facilities office. Breathless, a sheen of sweat forming on his pock marked face.

“Fuck’s sake. Not again.”

Terry, toad like on the creaking swivel chair, jabbed at his telephone angrily.

“Brian. . . he’s here again . . . Donny saw him in the bogs . . . as soon as you can . . . cheers”

Terry turned to Donny. Two ageing men facing each other in the unremitting strip lighting.

“Brian’s on his way. Close the bogs until he gets here”.
“Will do”
“He’d fucking better get nicked this time.”

Brian the Vice Officer made his way to the station. There was always some hesitation when going out on a call but really the Bread Man was a low level case. He posed no threat to Brian or any others. He wasn’t a paedophile, a flasher or a potential rapist. He was just a man who got off on eating a loaf of bread after smearing each slice around the rim of an uncleaned public toilet. He was a danger only to himself and merely an inconvenience to others.

Brian wished that all cases could be like the Bread Man, certainly now that he was in his sixth year in Vice. It was an unwritten rule that you had three years, four at most in Vice before being moved on to something easier. Something less abrasive and abusive. Something that didn’t make you come home and open a bottle of scotch the moment you walked through the door. Something that didn’t give you nightmares; creeping into your every waking moment; ruining your marriage and making you suspicious of everybody else and their thoughts.

But Brian, quiet and uncomplaining, had moved silently past year three, year four, year five and now year six. Psychologists would be unanimous in their opinion that his work would be causing potentially irreparable psychological damage. If they knew about him. Budget cuts, incomplete records and unread emails meant that Brian was left to slowly buckle and warp like a plastic doll left forgotten in a hot car.

Brian tried to manoeuvre his car through the clogged up roads. Giving the occasional blast on the siren to get through red lights but to little success.

Cunts.

Probably too engrossed in their own sordid fantasies to hear the siren. Each car housing sickness. Perverts encased in metal and plastic. Festering in their own deviance.
Get out of the fucking way!

Brian eventually arrived at the station and went into the toilets. The Bread Man was in the end cubicle, kneeling facing the toilet as if in prayer. Silently and dutifully taking each slice of cheap, white bread and wiping it smoothly and efficiently around the toilet bowl and then eating it in five or six unhurried bites.

Brian couldn’t see the Bread Man’s face but he knew that he was in a trance, detatched from his surroundings. The Bread Man had entered nothingness. A place where only he and his god existed.

This was going to be tricky. Brian stood in the door way to the cubicle, noticing that the Bread Man only had five slices left.

“Sir”

Nothing.

“Sir!”

Nothing.

The Bread Man remained in nothingness, alone with his god.

Brian entered the cubicle and shuffled closer to the Bread Man.

“Sir”

Nothing.

Brian crouched next to the Bread Man. Close enough to see the filth on the bread as he fed it between his cracked lips and into his yellowing mouth. Close enough to smell the Bread Man’s unwashed odour. Close enough to see the beatific vacancy in his eyes.

“Sir”

Still nothing.

Fuck. Brian didn’t know what to do. There was something about the Bread Man’s glazed expression that looked holy, as if to interrupt him would be an act of sacrilege. An affront to The Almighty. The Almighty who exists within the nothingness formed in the nexus of toilet bowls and cheap, sliced white bread.

Brian looked at the bag of bread. Only two slices left now. The Bread Man would be finished soon enough. Maybe he should just leave him.

Suddenly something snapped the Bread Man out of his trance. The cubicle, Brian and the rest of the outside world came rushing back. Silently he turned to Brian, his eyes alert but unthreatening.

A vague notion of long forgotten etiquette entered the Bread Man’s head and he reached into the bag, pulled out the penultimate slice of bread and offered it to Brian.

Silence

The Bread wavered in the harsh light of the toilets. Brian didn’t know what to do. Six years in Vice and he’d always been an impartial observer. There to apprehend and arrest only. But now, in the bleach scented grime of the toilets, he was being invited to cross over and enter into nothingness. Away from the real world and all of its blackness and disease and into the purity of nothingness.

There was no protocol for this kind of situation. Nothing in any hand book or good policing policy. This wasn’t apprehending an armed robber, dealing with a hostage situation or a high speed car chase. This situation was way outside the margins of modern policing.

What to do?

Looking into the Bread Man’s eyes there was undeniable warmth. A sense of reassurance, that everything would be OK. That life didn’t have to be continual blackness and loneliness. A sense that there’s something else; a divine being and a master plan. If only Brian would take the bread.

Shaking, Brian accepted the offering and dropped to his knees. The Bread Man nodded in approval, like a Priest giving Communion.

Brian slowly wiped the Bread around the underside of the rim, surprised by the ease at which it slid around. Without hesitation or looking at the bread he put it into his mouth.

Bite.

Chew.

Swallow.

Nothing.