people, even before his parents went off the
rails, was a curse that would show him horror before it let him die. He’d tried
to grow out of this notion, an all too neat fantasy of childhood, his very own
macabre fairy tale. Yet everything he’d done since made it seem fair and
true.
Most
people weren’t capable of understanding the way things really were. They went
to work and sweated on their treadmills and mowed their lawns, never knowing
that the nuclear furnace rolling through the sky above their heads and the
flames eating up their garden waste were glimpses of the chaos that would one
day burn the flimsy fabric of this world to ash. Then everything would be clean
and simple again.
He’d
once shared a cell with a gormless teenage smack-head who’d had an expensive
education, professional parents, skiing holidays and expectations before he
fell into another world. When he didn’t cry himself to sleep at night or wall
himself into catatonia, and provided nobody was around to smack him for
presuming to be different, he became an encyclopaedia. Trotting out facts as if
they were strange and wonderful jewels he couldn’t remember acquiring seemed to
soothe him, as if he’d aged sixty years in six months. ‘e=mc²’ lodged in
Firth’s mind, its mysteries repeatedly reeled off in a voice clever enough for
TV but a dangerous liability inside.
It
made so much sense to find that every ounce of this corrupt, breakable matter
was a store of unimaginable, destructive energy, compressed, caged and biding
its time. He liked late-night sc-fi films where the world had been cleansed by
nuclear war, leaving random people free to roam a purged world in safe
anonymity. Oddly, they always drifted together, to become known, to re-build
society, to bicker and fight.
He
wished it was him. He’d embrace the emptiness, treasure it. To be truly alone
with no use for your memories was a sweet dream. All the buff folders and
computer records and criminal justice professionals that kept those memories
alive would just be anonymous specks in the endless, irradiated dust.
The
TV was still blaring in the corner, a nice little flat-screen that Ali Bongo
had scored from somewhere. The blonde man in a suit had the studio bouncer at
his shoulder and a baying crowd at his back as he laid down the law to a pair
of seventeen year olds. A chair had been knocked over and a kid dripping with
nine-carat gold was screaming at a fat, pasty girl about drugs and shagging and
how he could bring up babby any fuckin’ way he liked, innit.
Firth
couldn’t see the remote so he pitched a full tin of lager at the off button,
missing it and hitting the centre of the screen. The braying persisted but the
image had gone, replaced by a jagged spider’s web, silver seared onto black
where crystals in the screen had memorised the moment of their destruction. One
flick of the wrist and chaos had found a way in.
He
held the dead roll-up between his lips and steadied his disposable lighter with
both hands. He squeezed the trigger, hearing the whisper of gas, and rolled the
flint, once, twice, three times. He couldn’t make it live, his thumbs like
rubber. If they could see him on the wing; Pyro, Fireman Firth, Crispy Duck,
couldn’t even strike a light in his own armchair now.
He
squeezed it hard, trigger down, plastic cracking under his palms, squeezing the
ridges of the flint into his thumb, rolling it, and the flame lived, purring
and breathing again. He rolled both eyes inwards as he focussed on its tapering
dance, pushing his chin towards the flame, not daring to move his hands,
sucking on the roll-up as it flared back into life, tasting treacle and ash.
For
a second he was staring at the piled mail through the flame, thinking how
dangerous it was to leave it all near a letterbox and how greedily it would
burn, how badly it wanted to burn, how many problems it could solve. He shook
his head, killed the spark,
rails, was a curse that would show him horror before it let him die. He’d tried
to grow out of this notion, an all too neat fantasy of childhood, his very own
macabre fairy tale. Yet everything he’d done since made it seem fair and
true.
Most
people weren’t capable of understanding the way things really were. They went
to work and sweated on their treadmills and mowed their lawns, never knowing
that the nuclear furnace rolling through the sky above their heads and the
flames eating up their garden waste were glimpses of the chaos that would one
day burn the flimsy fabric of this world to ash. Then everything would be clean
and simple again.
He’d
once shared a cell with a gormless teenage smack-head who’d had an expensive
education, professional parents, skiing holidays and expectations before he
fell into another world. When he didn’t cry himself to sleep at night or wall
himself into catatonia, and provided nobody was around to smack him for
presuming to be different, he became an encyclopaedia. Trotting out facts as if
they were strange and wonderful jewels he couldn’t remember acquiring seemed to
soothe him, as if he’d aged sixty years in six months. ‘e=mc²’ lodged in
Firth’s mind, its mysteries repeatedly reeled off in a voice clever enough for
TV but a dangerous liability inside.
It
made so much sense to find that every ounce of this corrupt, breakable matter
was a store of unimaginable, destructive energy, compressed, caged and biding
its time. He liked late-night sc-fi films where the world had been cleansed by
nuclear war, leaving random people free to roam a purged world in safe
anonymity. Oddly, they always drifted together, to become known, to re-build
society, to bicker and fight.
He
wished it was him. He’d embrace the emptiness, treasure it. To be truly alone
with no use for your memories was a sweet dream. All the buff folders and
computer records and criminal justice professionals that kept those memories
alive would just be anonymous specks in the endless, irradiated dust.
The
TV was still blaring in the corner, a nice little flat-screen that Ali Bongo
had scored from somewhere. The blonde man in a suit had the studio bouncer at
his shoulder and a baying crowd at his back as he laid down the law to a pair
of seventeen year olds. A chair had been knocked over and a kid dripping with
nine-carat gold was screaming at a fat, pasty girl about drugs and shagging and
how he could bring up babby any fuckin’ way he liked, innit.
Firth
couldn’t see the remote so he pitched a full tin of lager at the off button,
missing it and hitting the centre of the screen. The braying persisted but the
image had gone, replaced by a jagged spider’s web, silver seared onto black
where crystals in the screen had memorised the moment of their destruction. One
flick of the wrist and chaos had found a way in.
He
held the dead roll-up between his lips and steadied his disposable lighter with
both hands. He squeezed the trigger, hearing the whisper of gas, and rolled the
flint, once, twice, three times. He couldn’t make it live, his thumbs like
rubber. If they could see him on the wing; Pyro, Fireman Firth, Crispy Duck,
couldn’t even strike a light in his own armchair now.
He
squeezed it hard, trigger down, plastic cracking under his palms, squeezing the
ridges of the flint into his thumb, rolling it, and the flame lived, purring
and breathing again. He rolled both eyes inwards as he focussed on its tapering
dance, pushing his chin towards the flame, not daring to move his hands,
sucking on the roll-up as it flared back into life, tasting treacle and ash.
For
a second he was staring at the piled mail through the flame, thinking how
dangerous it was to leave it all near a letterbox and how greedily it would
burn, how badly it wanted to burn, how many problems it could solve. He shook
his head, killed the spark,
Similar Books
