Read Online The Dreams of Max & Ronnie by Niall Griffiths - Free Book Online Page A

or any one of a hundred other footballers bearing that mark and thought it looked cool and original and individual; many women, on the fleshy outsides of their palms, bear a little black squiggle because they once saw Cheryl Cole bearing that mark and thought it looked cool and original and individual; many women sport antler-like designs in the small of their backs because, well, that’s what everyone else has got. This must be the most tattooed nation on the planet, thinks Ronnie, with so few different designs; in any thousand people, 800 of them will be tattooed with any one of only five or so patterns. And hair: either worn shorn to the bone or teased down into comb’s teeth on the forehead. The hive mind hums. The hive mind drones. My people, the dream-Ronnie thinks. It is for these that I must kill and die far, far away. Drone goes the hive mind.
    â€“ These are your people, soldier boy, says the Beast. – Defenders of freedom. Keepers of the values of democracy and fair play. Do you see yourself fighting for these people? Killing for them? Dying for them? Tell me. What do you see?
    And the dream-Ronnie closes his eyes and it seems that he dreams still further, a dream-within-a-dream, a vision in a vision in which he sees himself in an armoured car travelling across a vast and flat expanse of one-colour sand beneath a blast-furnace sun; he feels the movement of the vehicle, feels the rocking of his body, feels the impact and detonation of the RPG as a sudden and dangerous idea in his bowels; sees himself, or what’s left of himself, supine on the seared sand, hears the hiss and sizzle of his escaping blood; sees his legs, several feet away; sees the unbothered blue of the high sky blacken.
    Singing yanks him from his trance. The crowd is singing songs of tribal intent, bellowed expressions of hatreds. ‘Three Lions on my Shirt’ – Ronnie makes out these words. Chanting. The air above the crowd crackles. Violence again is imminent. Ronnie notices that many mobile phones are being brandished, their owners eager to film some violence. The Ned has joined the crowd and has become lost in it but the grinner is watching them and still grinning. Ronnie doesn’t think he can stand to look at that grin any more. It hurts his eyes. Its very fixity is making him feel sick.
    â€“ Do you want to follow this man? the Beast shouts, pointing to the grinner, and many in the milling crowd turn to face him. – Follow this man to war?
    A roar from the stirring crowd.
    â€“ Then follow him! All the way to London! Three thousand miles away from the bullets and the blood!
    The crowd roars as one and falls in behind the grinner, who grinningly proceeds to lead them down the valley in a determined jog. All of them alike. All of them doing the same thing. The hive mind drones under a fizzing blanket of an electric charge which Ronnie knows will spark into destruction very, very soon. He hopes they’re out of the valley before that happens. He hopes he’s
    Â 
...woken up!
    â€“ Has he? Fuck me! Ronnie, boy! Welcome back!
    Ronnie opens his eyes and sees a cat, at close quarters, walk by him, a black-and-white cat with a question mark for a tail. He sees a smiling moo-cow close to his face. Then he sees two faces, human ones, that he recognises, two faces close by his, and he feels himself levered up into a sitting position and he rubs the mucus out of his eyes and plaps his lips to dislodge the icky sleep-slime.
    â€“ Three fucking nights, man! The face called Rhys is saying, quite loud. – You were out of it for three nights! Getting worried we were.
    â€“ Just about to call a fucking ambulance, the face called Robert says. – Thought you’d slipped into a bloody coma or something, yeah? That pill of Red Helen’s, shit.
    Pill? Red Helen? Knowledge enters Ronnie’s smeared head in several jolts and jerks. When he speaks, his voice is rusty with disuse: –