21F – Handouts

It’s cold, it’s damn cold and my toes are curling into themselves and I’m walking right on my toenails, grabbing my sock edges around for warmth. But it doesn’t do any good. There are too many chinks in my armour, where sleeve meets pocket, where neck meets collar, too many places for the cold to get in. I just have to keep moving, keep the blood pumping. I like to hear it in my ears, even if it means braving the cold. Tells me I’m alive.

I keep my feet crunching into the pavement. I’m almost at the station. I can see the stairs that lead down to the arcade, the subway, the comfort of the underground. I step faster, clearing the last few paces before the entrance.

And then one of them is standing in front of me.

I’m a little embarrassed. Normally I’m a pro at dodging these guys, stepping neatly out of the way of their outstretched hands, their plastic wrapped magazines. My favourite move is a lateral side step to the left and behind a fellow commuter – let them get trapped while I slide away unhindered.

Not this time.

He must have been hiding behind the newspaper stand. He steps in, blocking the entry to the stairwell, and he turns and looks at me. Well, as much as these guys can look, if you know what I mean. He’s standing there, not exactly in rags, but his clothes are starting to blend into his body, so that skin, hair and fibre seem to be gradually becoming an unwholesome whole. I pull my nostrils back too late as the odour hits me, prickly and more than a little offensive.

I hate these guys.

He reaches forwards to offer me a free magazine, hygienically wrapped in a plastic film. I look at the publication in his hands – there’s some kind of residue between his fingers and the plastic – a thin, transparent membrane that keeps the cleavage of some famous type safe from some unidentified gelatinous substance.

I’m not taking the magazine.

A grey lip curls back from some yellow non-teeth, and he groans slowly, a tired, breathy sound. He pushes his unwanted gift forward again.

You’d take it, wouldn’t you? You’re one of those people who says, well, at least he’s doing something useful. At least he has a legitimate place in society. Well, you know what I think? Find something else for them to do. Something out of the way. Everyone felt sorry for them and now they’re everywhere, handing out magazines, waving around signs so they get noticed, giving away tissue packets… They’re inescapable. They’re everywhere.

And so you’ll meekly take their offering, wont you? Because you’re supposed to. Maybe you give them a nod and a smile, maybe you make a quick grab and keep walking. And then, first chance you get, the magazines are discarded. You throw them on the pile and jam your gloved hands back in your coat pockets. No one really wants to touch the plastic any longer than they have to.

But everyone acts like we all get along fine.

I take a short step to the left, look for a way past. The magazine somehow remains in front of me. He pushes the publication inches away from my nose, and groans again, and the groan ends in a higher pitch, almost like a question.

No, I don’t want your damn magazine. Okay? I’m sorry you’re dead, and it sounds like a really bad deal, but it’s got nothing to do with me, and me taking your surely fine publication it isn’t going to change too much of anything.

There’s nothing for it – he’s blocking the way. I push roughly into him, careful not to contact any bare skin. I’ve got gloves on, but still – he’s decomposing, right? Surprised, he slides off to one side with what I guess is an expression of alarm, or something, and I tumble my way down the stairs.

Look, I’ve got nothing against the undead. I just don’t want the magazine.

At the bottom of the stairs the tunnel opens up into an old shopping arcade, all tiles and metal grilles. I take a few clattering steps forwards.

There’s another groan. I look back up the stairs and he’s following me. They don’t normally come down this far, I mean there’s no law against it, but its like an unwritten rule, it’s not their turf. I watch him awkwardly hobbling down the stairs, still holding out his magazine, gurgling with the effort.

I start to walk faster. I start to panic.

I hear him pick up his pace as well. No, more than that – he’s running, a grotesque half shuffle, sliding across the tiles, really moving. I break into a run, but he’s already right behind me, and he lets out a cry, not a groan, more of a twisted yell, and his hands are on my back, and he pushes and I’m on the ground.

I look up. He’s standing above me and suddenly he looks huge, massive. He leans down towards me, stares at me with those dead, yellowed eyes. He reaches up a hand, and I shrink away, flinch, shut my eyes.

He roughly shoves the magazine into my hand. And then he slowly shuffles away, leaving me curled up against the tunnel wall, amidst a pile of discarded magazines, holding a crumpled starlet wrapped in plastic.

20F – Fortune

“What do those things do?”

“Don’t touch!”

Her hand snaps out across the table, striking his fingers, and he’s surprised by how quick she is. Obviously a lot of life left in her. She looks at him reproachfully.

“You do not touch anything here, ok? No touching!”

“Ok, ok, no touching.”

What a con. What an absolute con.

He looks over at her magic rocks, worn river pebbles covered in markings and scratches.

“So, how’d you end up in this line of work? I mean was it a graduate diploma, or more of a trade?”

“Foolishness. If you do not open your mind, you will learn nothing.”

“And what if I do?”

A tiny pause.

“You might be… surprised.”

She grabs the pebbles in her bony hands, holds them up to her forehead. She starts to mumble to herself. His nose itches from the incense. He sneezes.

She looks up for a moment, then continues to mumble. Suddenly she shrieks, a wild, insane cry, and the pebbles are scattered across the table with a theatrical flourish. She continues to mumble as she waves her outstretched hand, her old, bony, wrinkled hand, over the pebbles.

Her eyes snap open.

“Not everything is good for you. I see a great deal of conflict. A troubled relationship…”

He coughs, excuses himself.

“I’m not in a relationship.”

She looks up.

“It could be a family conflict…”

He shakes his head.

“Only child. Both parents dead.”

“Ah, the loss… That is what I can sense…”

“So the stones say that I am suffering from the loss of my parents, eleven years ago?”

“That is what they say.”

“Smart stones.”

She clears her throat, spits into a small handkerchief. Then she gathers up her dress, this impossibly large, layered concertina of a thing, and drags herself forwards.

“Now, you have been seeing someone… a lady…”

“Ah… no.”

“She is beautiful… you are close to her, yes?”

“Uhn…”

“Maybe this is someone you do not realise you have feelings for?”

“Well…”

“This lady, she is known to you, you have desired her, but she…”

“She what? Just wants to be friends?”

“Yes! And you, you feel so much more…”

He clears his throat.

“I don’t think so.”

She looks up at him, eyes glassy and earnest.

“You cannot deny your true feelings for her! She is…”

“Ah… not my sort of thing actually.”

“You may not even…”

“I’m gay.”

A quiet, tiny pause.

“Of course, it is a… a special other, I have just assumed, because your feelings were so strong, that…”

Her voice trails off.

“Sixty bucks, for this? This is what it is? I mean, at least give me the illusion that there’s something…  something insightful going on here.”

She scowls at him now, and folds her hands roughly into the folds of her strange dress.

“If you do not believe, then I cannot enlighten you.”

“Believe? When you’re doing this?”

He lunges forward and scoops the stones up in his hands. She shrieks again, and pounds against him, scratches him, but he’s holding the stones to his forehead now, doing his own mumbling, and with an overwrought flourish he flings them across the table. She sits back down, crying softly to herself, rocking back and forth.

“You’ve ruined them. They are ruined!”

“There about as good as ever, from what I can see. Now lets see what I can make up about you. Lets see, you’re about to come into a lot of…”

He goes to say money, given that it seems pretty unlikely. But his brain switches a gear, and he says something else instead.

“Jealousy. You’re going to come into a big old pile of jealousy.”

“You have defiled the stones!”

“A sister.”

He stops for a minute, and then gets some traction on the thought. It snowballs.

“You’ve got a sister. Lets get specific and say it’s a twin.  I mean you’re probably an only child, but I can always say she was abducted at birth and you’ve never met her, right?”

She looks up at him, silent now.

“But no, I think you knew this sister. You used to play hopscotch together.”

This is easy for him. Its like writing, back in school, the images just floating into his head. All he has to do is walk past and pick them up.

“And you used to cheat.”

She’s staring at him, watching him, saying nothing, her mouth drawn to a narrow line.

“She knew you were cheating, but she still let you win gracefully. That shamed you. That made you hate her even more.”

He looks up. Her head is down. She isn’t moving, crying, isn’t responding at all. But he’s got a head of steam up now. He scratches his head for a second, and looks for a twist to the story. He looks at the stones, and an idea pops into his head. He imagines it perfectly, sees the two of them years ago, the sister watching from the sidelines.

“She was the gifted one of the family, right? And you? You were the supporting act. And these things? They were hers! You could never make them speak to you, but she could!”

He looks up, stops. He’s gone too far. She’s crying, shaking, shrunk into a tiny ball.

He goes to apologise, realises it would be feeble at this point. At least he stopped where he did. She hadn’t stolen the stones. She never murdered her sister. God, he was getting morbid. She hadn’t spent the next twenty years trying to get the stones to talk to her, hearing nothing more than the clatter as they fall to the table. She was just an entertainer, just trying to make a living.

He decides it would be bad form to ask for a refund.

He glances one last time at the stones, and he thinks of a old knife, and police tape, and blood. He shakes the uncomfortable images out of his head and turns to go.