(Fiction) Comrades

In the heat of summer houses dripped caustic gobs to the streets. It made men crazed.

They evaded it as best they could, the heat, the gobs, the death and disease, they evaded it in bars and brothels and squats, they evaded it in swimming pools and air conditioned palaces. Some were shaded by muralled parasols, some by their own calloused hands.

In one such bar, behind a few such calloused hands, sat four men. Most of the natural light was barred by chipped wood walls, or the solid metal boardings at the disappeared windows. Their table leant a good few degrees because one of the legs was that much shorter than the rest and the fat barman hadn’t washed their jug of watered-down beer, because he was just as afflicted as the room. As he passed it to them he shouted: “To the revolution! To freedom bruvvers!” To which the men had nodded halfheartedly through eyes made watery by roach-blood.

These men twitched more than most, they were skinnier, dirtier and stunk more than most, because of the rancid green roach-blood that swam in their veins, and made their brains contract while their stomachs heaved permanently.

Yet these men had a purpose all together more sacred than any weasely revolutionary who spat trite phrases and knew the economic situation and had followers and had lovers, and banged on from soapboxes in the park. Theirs was more lustful than sex, theirs was more pure than childhood. No need for contemplation. No debates, no balance. Cold steel.

The skinniest poured murky beer into murky beakers. His hand shook horribly. Through the muggy gloom and into each others’ dead eyes they stared. The skinny man croaked with a great effort: “Let’s fucking stamp this revolution down then.” They forced down a sip, a comradely sip of rank liquid and each fumbled below the table, to find their needles, and to find a vein.

Hours passed by in a lively, perspicuous blur. Their chairs were soft, velvet serpents, the floor a delightful little cloud, all spring and bounce.

Each man schemed, possessed and charming, erudite and mad. On paper stolen from a schoolgirl they drew plans, wrote speeches, designed beasts and swirling hypnoses. Men came and went, slogans like “A 40% tax take is crippling the common man just to pay for your foreign wars and upper class greed” passed through their ears as refreshing breezes. All around them in this den of fervor and grime men hatched plans to wipe out the governments and banks and all those who stole from them, as these shrewd junkies plotted to destroy that very revolution.

Darkness approached, and though it left behind the muggy heat it took away their roach-blood high, giving them instead the beginnings of nausea and aches. They had expected this, and they were prepared. While a little roach still afflicted them, said a cheery, “Goodbye comrade bruvvers, welfare is the enemy of the poor!”, and scuttled out, not forgetting their schoolgirl’s notebook, barely knocking into any tables, and presuming each glance was one of awe.

They do not remember their walk home now, but they left that diseased bar and turned out of its equally diseased alley, great hunks of cobble missing from it and glass and dead rats and faecal children and great bins spilling effluence because the binmen were perhaps lazy, or overworked, or perhaps not scheduled to come round on this day. From this high-walled abandonment they turned into the neon glow of some nameless shopping street, the crowds thin, the shops growing darker, trees and benches and humans all sterilized into such a powerful insouciance, it must be, they had mused, that they were created by one perfect, grey, production line, in some corner of the globe they could never see.

They were dragged home by slowing impulses, half-thought thoughts and anxious pains as they grappled with the big ideas with which they could no longer cope. Sleep came easily in their vast, down-filled beds.

One addict, named Marit by long-forgotten parents, was beckoned to stir by a riot narrated by a stern news anchor. The government, said she, had admitted that youth unemployment was on course to top 50% by the end of the year. Welfare would have to be cut, a brave junior minister had explained to a largish crowd, but essential services would be protected “as long as we have a mandate”. A man launched a TV at him, but the junior minister was far too high up.

Pocked and scabbed, Marit tried to muster interest. The TV was too bright, and its noise an ugly cacophony. He heaved his withered frame up onto his elbows, but they ached immediately. Around the vast, high-ceilinged room his friends lay, on sofas, on chez-lounges, on an armchair. One had removed his shirt, to reveal a perfect six-pack, unencumbered by flab. For a moment Marit stared, delighting in youth’s beauty that each of them shared.

While that stern woman barked on he reached a welted hand into his dirty pocket and withdrew the schoolgirl’s notebook. Down their, amongst the inordinate detritus of the sofa, that included a laptop and a suddenly agonizing hard back book wedged deep in his back he found the remote, and with a wild impulse borne of the just-realized pain cranked the volume up, until everyone awoke.

For a while they talked about roach-blood and a football match and their counter-revolutionary plot while bright sunlight walloped them. The heat of the day was rising, but their cracked air-con unit would provide no respite. They were afraid to read soberly the decisions of last night’s planning, their heads filled with suggestions they knew the notebook could not elaborate on.

It began well. How close are we to a revolution? Not very close. Riots happen a lot. Not many people have died yet, how many? About 5, maybe more. An election is more likely than a revolution, and that would be fine. The rev is bad.

Later, under the heading: Pln stop rev, they had written:

1) Use propaganda, like Hitler did.

2) Infect leaders with poison, like bleach.

This was the only useful information that they could obtain. Outside the hustle and bustle of another busy shopping day irritated them, and they reached for more roach-blood.

They watched, through blood-fettered gazes, a handsome man with a stern, charming baritone appear on their screen. The Leader of the Opposition was decrying the riots, talking of civility, of “our grand society that is too strong for such petty vandals to harm.” He promised political solutions, a 2% increase in corporation tax, an end to the evasion and avoidance and the regulation of the off shores, jobs for the young, training, world leadership in technology. Our addicts murmured in agreement, and in most homes on their well-to-do street, they would have found allies.

The Leader of the Opposition finished his speech with a bland oratorical flourish and headed from the grand marble balcony to parliaments unknown bowels. In here it didn’t stink or bubble, in here no great gobs made people mad. Fine humans in fine clothes walked with urgent grace, carrying embroidered cases and wittering fine pleasantries. The Leader of the Opposition harassed some minion to his side.

“What of the riots then, any trouble?”

“Nothing major, broken windows, nothing more.”

“Fine. Any reaction to Gangrene’s bankruptcy?”

“Not yet, it’s still early. Police are anticipating something later.”

Gangrene’s, a huge chain of bars so bland and so cheap that they had conquered the nation overnight, had sent out a press release stating the immediate closure of a quarter of their bars, and, unless a buyer could be found, the staggered closure of all the rest in the coming months. Hundred’s of parliamentary hours had been spent discussing this. It was sure to be a devastating blow to the rebellious classes’ fragile psyche, a capitalist truth that would strike more incisively than any tax hike or benefit take, a dagger to the nation’s poor.

.It was to one of these bars that our four roach-blood addicts lurched, under duress of £1.99 breakfast baguettes, their heads pounding and arms blackened, unsteady and bashing any shopper that was too engrossed in themselves to step sideways. Marit, dressed in his thinnest rags to keep cool, felt every tendon tense in rage as a small boy thwacked his knee with something hard. He looked at his comrades, foul, nasty vermin too gaunt to be considered men, and bottled his anger inside for another time.

They were weak from last night, desperate for their latest hit to kick in. They passed the various pink boutiques and mahogany-laced antique shops with tunnel vision, focused on moving forwards, and moving straight. Warriors in the heat of battle they did stagger and slip, but they kept on as good cannon fodder, tripping and plodding to their goal.

Soon their high-grade product began to flood their synapses, and each came up in a thunder of unstable heavens. Four roach-blood swaddled humans, skin a ghastly, pallid grey, lips cracked and bleeding, muscles wasted, teeth rotten, hair rotten, nails rotten, these four rotten men, briefly awoken by the toxicity of their blood. As they turned the last corner the stifling crowd became long-lost friends, their lurching became ballet and their heads suddenly cleared with bold perspicuity.

But wait, they each thought. What’s this? They had no need for words anymore. Each felt themselves communicate a million observations and a million tangents to the others through the blood’s mad unity. Inside Marit’s head ideas and impulses burned, sudden and devastating, he knew they were each wondrous, but the truly magical would not hold, they would not let themselves be sullied by imperfect expression. A crowd is outside our bar. The place is empty, all the people are outside. They are angry, excited, impassioned and alive! No, these people are revolutionaries! They plan to burn this place, look a shout, over there! He, he has a placard! Boys, each man thought, this is our time, once more unto the breach! We will crush this revolution today!

They were made brave, but not mad, by the roach-blood. They were outnumbered, and savvy intellectuals, not street savages. They shuffled off to the side, to scheme.

The crowd was large, 30 people at least, and angry. In it were workers from four different Gangrene’s trying to get in, claiming pay was owed, claiming they would rip off heads and burn the place down. Heavy steel chains secured the doors, but a light on inside suggested someone could hear. Still the heat was a bombardment that stole lucidity and gave only rage.

From the back, with a wild crack of bestial madness a burly shithouse of a man burst forward and locked huge paws around the wooden banister of the terrace. It was strong, but he shook the glass in the doors with his effort, and the wood creaked while the crowd cheered. Hercules fought with his task and emboldened others, some leapt up the stairs and grabbed the sturdy palm trees that lined the terrace, trying to rip them from the cement bases. A couple tried to heave the heavy blackboards from their chains. All around the destructive urges caused creaks and rips and tears in Gangrene’s dying empire.

The savage screams eventually reached the ears of the distracted roach-blooders, who turned aghast, to witness a man finally kick through a palm tree trunk, and with a roar and to cacophonous cheers from the crowd he pick up the murdered thing and rammed all ten feet of it through the window, obliterating it. For a moment everyone paused, to consider the ramifications of what they were about to do, but the bloodlust was too strong, one brave man dived in, followed by more and more, vengeance of the most pure, perfect kind.

Marit tumbled back with his comrades, away from the mob. As the throng of shoppers finally turned to stare at this latest haemorrhaging of their empire, too shocked, too fearful, too disbelieving to act, four sallow faces edged through the crowd, determined to crush the poor and their dreams once and for all.

They raced through the pedestrianised streets, avoiding great statues and finely-manicured trees while bumping past the elegant masses they sought to protect, the extravagant few from whom they realized their fortune.

Eventually they saw some two policemen, and began to rush, but Marit held his fellows back. “Look at them, one fat and coarse, the other a pikey shrew. They are against us! This is madness!”

Marit thought for a moment, his brain a playground for roach-bloodied ideas. “Who to trust, can anyone stop this, will we have to do our bit? Will we have to be free?”

Suddenly one of his ilk found the courage, the incision, that Marit knew he should have found himself. The man shouted in an intemperate squawk, “No, no, I won’t admit defeat! We must go higher, we must warn the Prime Minister himself! Who else! Onwards, and to parliament!”

The idea washed out all others. At a time as desperate as this they had to go to the top. Marit, spurred by those fine words, led the way. They lived within spitting distance of parliament’s great chamber, and as they paced the roach-blood made them strong and gorgeous and right. They walked silently, each deliberating and resolving. This vile revolution leaves us no alternative.

Still the roach-blood swamped then in waves and rounds of ecstasy.

Parliament’s great walls soon loomed in front of them. The grand edifice, towering toward the heavens, carved from ancient stones now discoloured by city smog, but no less impressive for that. The bizarre irregular triangle shape, that stood so nobly for the separation of powers, with three sharpened points, menacing and crazed. Huge windows of intricate stained glass, circular towers that sprouted pointlessly and wonderfully from each tip and the witches and fairies and gods that lined the roof, all of it protecting the fine ideals of their perfect world.

The roach-blooders were moving rapidly through the various stages, their eyes were hazy and the sun blinding. They lingered at the magnificent black gates, beside the security guards in their fine uniforms, more for show than protection, waiting for one of parliament’s Bentleys to come by. Marit stared at the faces under the grand, high black hats of the guards. Could they be trusted? One looked ok, though even he had a distinct poverty-frown, but the other was ghastly, a fox-man, a cunning shrew in the fields, a nave and a liar. He beckoned his friends into a huddle, and they edged from the revolutionary guards.

As the most pure, shocking, wave of roach-blood yet coursed through them one of these cars passed through the huge wrought iron gates. They had to act. The four sprung to it leaping on it, clawing at the windows and paintwork. Two dived onto the bonnet, while two more were at the windows, scrambling maniacally, and each screamed and blathered about the revolution, about the riot at Gangrene’s, that parliament could be next, desperate that inside the hallowed vehicle some attention would be to their warning. Each spewed and spewed for many seconds, until the guards roughly dragged them away, and car moved off without acknowledgment. The four were handcuffed and searched, but their labour was complete.

Inside the esteemed Bentley, the Leader of the Opposition had heard enough. “What’s this riot?” He asked his driver.

“It can’t be anything major sir, there haven’t been any reports.”

“Swing by it would you, and contact the police. We knew Gangrene’s could be trouble.”

They drove two streets down without seeing anything that suggested a riot. Hesitantly, the driver blinked his indictors towards Maidavele, home of Gangrene’s besieged flagship. “Sir, this could be dangerous.”

The impatient Leader of the Opposition spat with irritation. “How dangerous, for a bullet-proof vehicle with a trained driver such as yourself? Just do it. If it was a real riot there’d be some sign of it up here, wouldn’t there. I want to see for myself, I want to see this firsthand. This is the acid test. Just go.”

The driver turned. They passed the ornate, terraced town-houses with their perfect lawns, the hint of humanity becoming a soporific crush as they reached the antique shops, restaurants and hair salons that society’s finest continued to indulge, despite the dire economic warnings. There was no riot. At Gangrene’s stood two policemen guarding the cordoned patio, nothing more. The driver stopped and got out, showing his I.D to the sergeant. There had been no riot. A few people broke in, the sergeant said, no one was hurt, just smashed glass and splintered wood.

The driver relayed this information to the Leader of the Opposition, who chuckled, and immediately called the Prime Minister, eager to share the relief, to rejoice in their fulsome control.