Extract One

Everybody always wants something, from the gentleman at the other end of the phone line who wants to know when the next best time to call back will be to Mark who already had what he wanted. He just had to get rid of this utterly inconvenient distraction. He had no idea when the next best time to call back would be, so Mark simply picked a number between one and ten. It was a simple method, no doubt about that. But the quickest and most effective considering the urgency of the situation. “Five. Call back around five o’clock; I am sure someone will be in by that point.” He spoke calmly and assertively like one would in a business meeting. Then he slowly put the phone back down, making sure to press the red end call button on the way. He turned round and headed back into the kitchen. It was brand new, gleaming. That fresh wooden smell was still hanging around gently. The kitchen looked brand new and rather expensive, with its huge American style stainless steel fridge and mahogany cupboards, which inside held many quirky and intricate drawers and storage spaces. There was a tall and thin glass fronted door. Through which you could see shelves full of champagnes, wines and other party beverages. His hostage sat slouched in front of the glass fronted door, still unconscious as far as Mark could tell. The man’s blue tie and his silk white shirt were stained with the blood dripping from his nose.

 Six minutes ago Mark had knocked on the door, with a couple of good thumps to make sure he was heard over the din of the large flat screen and surround sound system in the living room. His target had come to answer the door without as much as a sound. The only check that was made was a fast glance through the spy hole to check whether his visitor was male or female. The door handle squeaked round slowly and as the man opened the door four or five inches he began, “Who are...” He was stopped short. As Mark’s heavy boot sent the door crashing into his skull. He fell back, head thudding into the tiled floor. Knocking him out cold. The man was bleeding from two separate places; the first being his nose and the second being the cut on the back of his head. Both injuries had occurred during Mark’s introduction. Mark preferred to introduce himself in the manner which he intended to conduct this short relationship between himself and the gentleman who lay in front of him bleeding. And of course it would be moronic to introduce himself with any form of personal which is traceable. As it turns out the best way to introduce yourself as a violent person, is to be violent.

Update

This next piece is an extract from a bit of writing im working on at the moment. Enjoy.

Letter Bombs and Beer Riots

There have been many notable things to happen in the news in the last few weeks and months, some have been deeply worrying and particularly troublesome for those involved. As for the rest of us watching on from the sidelines it has been another series of events that grabs our interest either because it’s exceptionally humorous or because it confirms our suspicions that most men are cowards.

 The cowards in question are the men that sent letter bombs to Neil Lennon, Trish Godman and Paul McBride QC for no other reason than the fact that they are associated with Celtic Football Club. It is no surprise to me that this kind of extreme behaviour has reared its infectious head in Scottish football. Nowadays we live in a world where more and more people find the need to express dissatisfaction or anger through the keyboard. People can tweet, status update and blog about their thoughts and feelings until there is nothing left to tell, probably because they feel that they can reach a much larger audience by telling hundreds of online ‘friends’. But it becomes just another form of school yard bullying when groups of people get together to start malicious campaigns of hate against one man. And the Scottish Governments plan to enforce a new law on sectarianism on the internet has so far only served one purpose: to legitimise the hatemongering behaviour. As enforcing laws against it means it will never go away, my guess is that the idiots who are the culprits would find another way to amuse themselves if they were just ignored. The legislation is not needed, but it will probably be enforced and with it long gone are the days when the letter sent to the points of view page is just an angry one.

On a lighter note though, I found the story that emerged from a Tesco store in Greenock last week to be particularly funny. Tesco were offering three cases of beer or cider for just twenty pounds, but due to some form of computing error the offer was going through tills at only eleven pounds. As word spread this sparked bargain fever for customers looking to take advantage of the great deal, nowhere more so than in Greenock, where police were called because of heavy congestion and traffic jams in the car park. Apart from the obvious funny side, the thing that worries me about the situation is that the Scottish Government plans, now that it has gained a majority in parliament, to set a minimum pricing for alcohol. Which will drive up the price. Soon enough the police in Greenock and all over Scotland will have to deal with riots in the streets about the common man not being able to afford his weekend binge or the common woman, scraping her savings just to put a meal and a glass of wine on the table.

Update

The next piece to go up was written a while ago, as a lot of stuff I have been writing has been on hold during exam season. I have updated the piece though and hope that you will still enjoy it.

Many Thanks

Many thanks to author Andy Briggs for taking the time to read the blog. I was very grateful for his positive and encouraging feedback in the post that he made on his own website http://www.trappedbymonsters.com/2011/05/creative-writing/. His comments are hugely encouraging, especially coming from a successful professional writer such as himself. It has given me the inspiration to start writing a few new pieces which will be posted very soon.

Flying Home

It is not very often that I have awoken from a restful siesta to find myself sitting above the clouds, watching them in their seemingly great mass rolling and swaying, dipping and rising just as the sea does. There is a special feeling about it, being higher up than anyone else, being able to see that gorgeous streak of orange rising gently into a cosmic green, which transforms as instantly as it appears to that familiar sky blue and finally fading into the black wilderness of deep space. It’s peaceful and it’s heavenly, it gives you a taste of what the deities must feel like when they are perched up here looking over our world.

Then suddenly the plane begins to jolt and shake around you, tearing you violently away from the soft ambience of the cushioned white paradise. Your heart begins to race. Faster and faster. It beats off the inside of your chest. The cabin shudders left, with screeches and cries of metallic pain, that makes your imagination run away with itself. It takes you places that you never want to tread, that deep dark pit of your mind. The place to be entered at your own risk, nothing good can come from letting your mind stray here. It is bitter, bleak and barren of any sense of reason or rational thought. The plane stoops, rattles and swerves right. The force makes your stomach jump and in its surprise you begin to feel sick.

Scared to death by the thought of what is to come – you see the flames crackling around scorched and barely recognisable faces, there complexions missing, replaced by the hideous black residue. You can only breathe deeply and grip the arm rests, stiffening your spine up against the seat, desperate for it to make you feel safe again. But it does no good. The plane dips towards those clouds once more, throwing the contents of your stomach upwards. Stomach retching you try to claw for the paper bags. You know one more jolt, a tiny shudder or a sudden dip will make  the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end as your stomach convulses, sending its contents plummeting into the bottom of the bag. But just as it all seems so desperately close, the turbulence fades to a stop. The sea of clouds parts, the miracle happens before your very eyes and all you can do is gaze in appreciation as the roads and lights of civilisation are revealed to you in their most sparkling glory. The lit up streets etch a pattern across the earth, like the veins of the great cities. And you realise your home again.

All Fun Flying Home

Wrote a little descriptive piece of writing when I was flying home from Barcelona. Struggled on the plane because I didn't have any paper so I ended up writing it on the back of my boarding pass. Was one of those strange experiences and I just had to write it down as it happened. Anyway I hope you enjoy.

Blurred Hope

The disorder of what at first seemed to be thoughts began ever so slowly to organise themselves, though in truth these were not real thoughts, as real thoughts are questions that the mind asks itself. But the flesh tearing, bone shattering confusion of the situation coupled with the pitch black stain in the corporal’s eyes and the disorientating feeling of his entire body being lifted and then dropped, dully thudding into the ground had rendered these questions of the mind without any answers. As the confusion of incomplete thoughts slowly settled in the mind, his body began to react to the situation that had just occurred. First he felt the dry scorched sand on his face; his cheekbone had made its own little indent and his fingers twitched feeling the softness of the sand between them. There was no telling what kind of chemical imbalance or bodily reaction that had acted so much like the therapeutic properties of the common medicinal painkiller, perhaps it was the confusion of his dehydrated and trauma stricken mind, this we cannot be sure of, but what is certain is that the corporal felt it now. It came like a surging torrent, engulfing his entire body straight from the epicentre of the shoulder, a large hole, a bullet that had entered the top of his right shoulder and had exited along with a large amount of shoulder skin and fragments of bone. The pain spread out like wildfire, searing through every muscle. His toes curled, the hairs on his legs stood on end and his chest convulsed, stomach twisting in knots. He began to dry heave into the sand, the pain clawing at every fibre in his body holding him down. His oesophagus opened again and he coughed. What the fuck is going on? That was the very first complete thought that entered his head as something flicked back into place and he remembered the village. He remembered the barrels in the window. He remembered the screams of his comrades and most of all he remembered the searing pain, the same pain that gripped his entire body at this very moment. The pain was not the worst part though, not even close. As the memories of the patrol came back to him in small increments he began to feel his feelings once again. It was as if someone had seen the body of a soldier lying lost in the sands of the Helmand desert and had decided no, today is not your day, and you do not get to die. You will rise again. And as if the words of the desert had caught him off guard the soldier lifted his head and opened his eyes.

It was dark, the moon was in the sky as one might expect accompanied by a vast crowd of stars and constellations that looked on at the body of the man lying lost in the desert. He began to move, slowly raising his left elbow in order to give him leverage over his own body. Then his right elbow, but he was caught once again by the eruption of pain from his right shoulder. That wasn’t going to work, so he lowered his left elbow and raised the uninjured shoulder up to roll over onto his back and used his powerful abdomen muscles to raise his back from the ground much like a sit up. This motion he must have performed over half a million times, at least, since joining the army. It was perhaps the darkness, or the cold of the night time desert or both that caused the onset of loneliness, there was no one else around and he had no idea of his position. It would be difficult enough for a rescue team to find a group of men out here, never mind a single man but the train of thought was very short lived as he realised the others must be around somewhere. Considering what had happened, there was a high probability that they were injured like him. Perhaps they were carrying much more serious injuries and needed his help. It took a great effort for him to get to his feet, hauling himself against the pain and the weight of gravity, which told him in no uncertain terms that the ground was the place that he should remain. His instincts fought this though, and in a battle of wills he managed to raise himself unsteadily onto his feet. The pain came in pulses strangely similar to the rhythm of his heart. He briefly took stock of the situation. No helmet, that was gone. No rifle, also gone and much of the top of his right hand shoulder was missing. This gruesome sight twisted and contorted his stomach forcing what bodily fluids that remained up through the network of pipes until his mouth was filled with the hot globular reek. His mind hazed for a second, as if it was trying desperately to remove its conscience from the situation it found itself in, he spilled several mouthfuls worth of stomach acid and bile into the arid desert. His chest convulsed again the smell from the wound was horrific and fleshy, what one would imagine the smell of animal remains to be, if they had never experienced such horror, but this time it came to nothing and he began the task of re-organising his thoughts starting with what was his new main priority. He had to bandage up this gaping wound, partly because his dazed mind had come to the conclusion that this injury would be best kept from infection that way and because his eyes, being the eyes of a human, cannot resist the temptation of staring deep into the gaping wound, creating all kinds of imaginative horrors. The eyes themselves have a traumatic experience living with the humans that they are born to behold, witnessing for them the evils of this world; Gruesome murder, mutilation, rape, torture, starvation and disease and many more of the things that the eyes are forced to focus on but are helpless to do anything about.

Another cough, another convulsion left the corporal feeling desperate and weak. With immense difficulty  he had removed his standard issue military jacket and his plain white vest top and he was attempting to wrap it around the wound as tight as possible, whilst creating a sturdy knot to hold the make shift dressing in place. With the use of only his left arm, this task was much more difficult than it should be. He tried in vain several times to lift his right arm up to aid his left, but as the bullet had exited the top of his shoulder it had taken with it a large amount of flesh and bone, severing several nerve endings leaving the use of his right arm, not impossible, but excruciatingly painful. First he attempted to feed the makeshift bandage under his shoulder and attempted to tie a knot over the wound, but he had not thought this properly through and he let out a piercing scream that echoed in the darkness around him. The way in which the material had moved, dug the fibrous material sharply into his wound separating two meaty pieces of torn muscle and causing a stab of tremendous pain. Holy shit. The corporal’s words trembled out. No, no that will not work. Stammering and shuddering with the pain the corporal attempted to sling the material over his shoulder and pull it downwards to make a knot under his shoulder this time.

With several cries and yelps, the corporal managed a satisfactory bandage. It made no real difference but it did make him feel slightly more optimistic about his chances of surviving, with such a horrific injury, now that he had done something about it. And with his first objective completed he looked on to the next but nothing could be seen not in this darkness. The moon still watched him from the sky. It was the only definable shape that he could see. Unless you are to imagine the shapes of the stars, not in the traditional five or six point shape, that they are so often portrayed in by children’s books or television shows they were merely dots; some bigger than others. He knew not which way was north or south, neither could he define west from east or east from west in this shade of pitch which surrounded him. He had to find his way somehow and the stars were of no use to him because out here he struggled to identify even the most easily recognisable constellations. Ursa Major, the great bear was lost in the sea of stars. Meaning he had no way of finding the North Star. Look for the brightest in the sky, that was no use to him because they all seemed equally bright. His water deprived mind came up with the idea of finding his lighter, which he had on purposefully placed in one of the many pockets of his standard issue military trousers, fitted with a special utilities belt, for specific items, such as magazines of ammunition for both the rifle and the hand gun and a place for his dagger. All gone nothing left, so he checked the first pocket on the left hand side, nothing. A fever of panic began to rise as he thought about spending the night alone in the desert. No heat, no light and the weight of the fearful dark night sky rubbing up against him. As the cold began to break his resistance his hands shook with the chill and the terror of abandonment.  

Tentative infantile steps covered only twenty yards of Afghan desert before the corporal reached a small rock formation which, for no reason that is identifiable to the human conscience, he considered a refuge point. Exhausted and hanging on to the edge of existence, he collapsed into the sand and rested his back against the foot high rock. As the darkness began to close in, he thought of his comrades. They must be out there somewhere. Perhaps they have already regrouped and are trying to figure out how it is they will find their way back to base without any more casualties, perhaps not. The thought lay at the back of his mind but it was so horrific that it could not be touched and deciding that no one would want to hear this thought, especially himself, he left it there, sitting at the back of his mind. He wanted to wrap warning lights around it to keep anyone from trying to access the thought, but if he did that then it would be harder for him to draw his attention away from it. Warning lights, by this time his face had met the sand again but he hadn’t noticed, warning lights were a strange thing to think about. But before he could answer himself, the image of the city grew at the forefront of his inward sight and he could imagine police cars and ambulances. All the different warning lights that his eyes had been trained to associate this kind of pain with but it gave him comfort in a way because he could remember his city, his home and his family. Shit, the family. That was the first time that he had thought about them all day. To be fair to him though, it had been a bad day that had started much too abruptly with the screech of the Sergeant in his ear and had ended much too fast with a bullet tearing through his shoulder. The events in the village began to play out in his mind’s eye but he felt his stomach clench with fear, as if he were scared that it would happen all over again. Then he forced himself to think about his family, his mum and his dad, his girlfriend and his friends all waiting on his safe return. He had promised them too much when he said he would be home in one piece. Clenching his whole body tight to stop the chill from taking him he closed his eyes to let the thoughts linger and the darkness slowly creep over.

The Moving Sands

Eyes open. The light sliced through the dark of the tent, attacked the darkness and it retreated to the corners and behind the objects of the room to form shadows. The shadows dodged the light wherever it fell. It disturbed the bodies where they lay. The source hung in the middle. The bodies on the left hand side of the room, stacked two high, cast their shadows left. There were eight of them to four bunks. On the right hand side the same, except they cast their shadows to the right.

Eyes open. The cry pierced through the room for the second time. Up and ready, outside in five minutes. The bodies tossed around in their bunks, bare feet hit the floor. Groans of disbelief could be heard from all corners of the tent. Their rest was over and now it was time to start moving again. T-shirts, trousers, jackets and heavy duty boots were pulled on one after another. Soldiers emerged from the tent. They formed a disciplined line facing the Staff Sergeant. They looked around tentatively, it was still dark and this made them all feel nervous. The eerie silence of the desert was never comforting to their minds. It had that same feeling of calm that made the storm seem all the more powerful and terrifying. The darkness made it worse in their heads, even though there was no difference. The Sergeant did not care; six minutes had gone by since those familiar orders had been announced. He looked at the line of faces. Determined expressions looked back at him. Six minutes. Their faces dropped, eyes closed. The odd curse was muttered under their collective breath, quietly as to avoid the Sergeant’s range of hearing, but he was not listening. His mind was already racing, plotting and coming up with the words he would use to announce the already expected hour of hell that awaited the sixteen bodies lined up in front of him.

It was the roaring, red face that announced the start and finish of their torture, the punishment that brought any man to the edge of what was physically possible to endure. It was the type of punishments that tore ligaments in two and just as many of the men were on the brink of spilling their guts onto the parched desert sand.  The Sergeant stopped the soldiers, after fifty nine minutes, in order to spend the remaining sixty seconds lecturing his troop of sixteen men on the importance of time keeping, in order to keep plans firmly held together. A plan or an operation is dependent on many factors; the weather conditions, the level of planning and commitment behind it and the diligent keeping of perfect time by every soldier. The Sergeant explained to his soldiers that if any of them were to make the mistake of bad timing in a warzone then they will die out there. The echo of the words pulsated around the camp as the hearts of the soldiers beat against the inside of their chests. The punishment for their bodies was over for now and the sun began to rise, pushing the darkness back, over the distant Hindu Kush Mountains. Their relief was a catalyst for a few childish remarks, a shove here and a push there, of course only when the Sergeant’s back was turned.

When he disappeared out of sight, presumably heading for the commanders tent, the sniggers and shoves broke out into laughter as the radiant light began to warm the cool, desert air. It was that perfect time of the morning before the heat of the sun became violent and irrepressible by midday. The soldiers dispersed for some downtime, they knew from experience that they had exactly an hour before the Sergeant returned. At that point they would start preparations for a routine patrol. Some of the soldiers went off to exercise in the recreational quarters. Many different soldiers from so many different countries but the greatest numbers came from America, Britain, Canada and a selection of European nations. It was the only place in the desert with such a diverse concentration of life. The familiar buzzing of distant helicopters could be heard, incoming and outgoing, ferrying passengers; reporters, camera crews, politicians, reinforcements and the ever more frequent wooden boxes full of bricks. In the camp you did and said whatever you could to stop your mind going to these places, amusing yourself by swapping magazines and old newspapers. Keeping your nerves calm with whatever tobacco you could get your hands on, trying to make this existence even a little like life back home. If a helicopter carrying the precious commodities failed to show or got shot down en route there was no mourning for the life of the dead pilot and crew, not a single thought for their families, just anger. As anger begins to take hold all sense of normality is destroyed, it burns in the wreckage of the helicopter. It had been four days since the announcement of the crash and the soldiers were beginning to get used to reading the same newspapers every day, it was their new sense of normality. The habit of regrouping as a troop outside the briefing tent was also an important one.

The sun hung over the top of the landscape radiating heat down, up and over the dunes. The wind caused by the heated pockets of air, forced the sands to move, shifting left and right, backwards and forwards, throwing the patrol almost three kilometres off course. The soldiers scanned the horizon. Nothing could be seen West or East, a large dune covered the South but North there was something. It stuck out from the endless golden sea. It was inorganic, lines perpendicular to the flat Northern sands, forming the outlines of what was perceived by the Sergeant to be a village. The Sergeant looked at his watch, it read 1500 hours. The sun was torturous; they had been lost in the sand storm for nearly two hours and had no idea of their current position with their radio burried by the storm. After several minutes of deliberation he decided the village was between four and five kilometres due North of their current position. With empty canteens and mouths parched, the early signs of dehydration were beginning to set in. Desperation began to drive them northwards.

The soldiers pushed themselves on; desperate they waded through the sand for hour after hour, the intensity of the reflective light burning on the retina of their eyes. The relentless heat lashing at their backs, pushing them down  and every time a comrade fell they couldn’t help. They had to stay in formation. All that could be done was to shout simple words of encouragement, like a father trying to teach his young son. The sand was loose and thick; it was like walking in deep snow. Each step drained the soldiers of vital energy. One of the soldiers on the far left of their formation was talking to himself, completely delirious. Yet, with the Sergeants constant encouragement the troop had managed to cover what turned out to be the four kilometres to the northern village in two hours. One by one they began to realise why they had stopped. The village was one hundred metres away. The sergeant knew and understood the situation better than anyone. Military intelligence had informed him that there were two villages within a ten kilometre radius of the camp. Both villages were North East of the camp’s position. One village was under influence from American Forces as they had driven the enemy out and built a school for the locals to receive an education. The other village was known to be an enemy stronghold. The sand storm made it impossible, without the help of a radio, to know which village the patrol had stumbled across. So the choice was simple in the eyes of the Sergeant, stay lost in the desert and die of dehydration or take the chance of water and the opportunity of rescue before sundown.

The troop was aware of the situation and their collective silence was enough to tell the Sergeant that they were in agreement with him. On approaching the village the soldiers did not lay down arms, a gesture that is universally understood. The sandy, ramshackle brickwork houses gave no clues. Every soldier had a deep feeling, right at the pit of the stomach, any sudden movement would make them vomit uncontrollably. There was no sign of a school, all the men had full, tangled beards and there were neither women nor children visible. There were dark skinned men seemingly unarmed shouting, hollering at the soldiers. The Sergeant began speaking, shouting back trying to calm the men down but it happened faster than the flick of a safety switch. Two glimmering barrels appeared in the dark, second floor windows of the large, central building. Shots bounced repeatedly off the Kevlar body protection of the soldiers before the projectiles found the gaps. Screams could be heard from inside the houses as the rain of ammunition snapped and cracked and echoed out over the desert. The guts of the soldiers spilled out onto the parched sand as the desert finally took what it wanted. In the middle of the village lay the bloodstained bodies of seventeen soldiers. As the sun began to fall and the light started to fade out across the vast desert, the bodies cast their darkened shadows.

The Gorgeous Glow

 

The sky was dark, deep dark blue, almost purple with hints of pure black. The rain was lashing down from it. Battering off the soaked pavement. Small streams of water had formed, following the edge of the kerb. Feet splashed violently around on the layer of water. Above the feet a swarm of jackets and raincoats, most of them black, with a few spots of colour here and there. Above that a sea of umbrellas again mostly black. The umbrellas moved and swayed with the wind carrying their holders along the drenched Glasgow street. The arch of Glasgow Central Station stood above them. He was glad to be sheltered under it.

Eleven o’clock. James noticed the large digital clock face on the big board, which was full with information. Arrivals. Paisley Canal Street 11.15am. Irrelevant. He was looking for departures. Looking to leave. The weather was depressing. The congestion of cars and business men made him anxious. His eye twitched, staring into the maelstrom of suits brought back that painful memory. He pinpointed the exact moment when it had began to crumble in his mind’s eye. He felt his stomach tighten and his jaw clench. His eye twitched again, as the veins in his forehead began to throb. But the distant bark of a station security guard pulled his mind back from the edge and he refocused his thoughts. No one that passed James by looked up from their newspapers or smart phones. It was silence but it had the background noise of the station. No one talked to each other, not anymore, not properly. Departures. Inverness 11.45am. Quite far, but not far enough. London Euston 12.30pm. Far away, but it was just another city. Just another landscape with a famous skyline and a rabble of accents, night and day. Peace was what he wanted. It was what he needed.

David could not hear himself think. The young woman sitting in front of him was complaining about something. God knows what it was though. There was an ear shattering shriek coming from inside the pram which stood next to her and the tapping of computer keyboards from all around the room. Tap. Tap. Tap. Each one felt like it was knocking off the side of David’s skull. He felt it rising from the pit of his stomach. Every tap and every squeal from the pram and every word that came out of the young woman’s mouth, encouraged it, gave it momentum. Until he reached breaking point. David heard the words ‘savings account’ and they tipped him over. ‘Shut up!’ David roared at her. The young woman recoiled in horror. The room fell silent. All eyes focused on David’s panicked expression. He couldn’t bear the place any longer, so he grabbed his jacket and left.

James waved the magazine in the woman’s face but was turned down without even a glance in his direction. Sixteen years of living in Glasgow and the last time any kind of a stranger had looked up from their tabloid or their handheld gadget, was... well James could not remember. There were two different types of suits. The unfriendly ones who would glare at you. Shoot you the kind of look that said ‘get lost’, and say ‘No’ with the deepest feeling of resentment. Then there were the suits who would just completely ignore you, not even glance your way when you asked. They were the rude ones. The ones that treated him like he did not even exist. He despised them the most. The people, who ignored him, were the kind of people who looked at the world, only to see it orbiting a statue of themselves.

David slammed the door of the bank branch behind him and took desperate flight down the street and turned right onto Gordon Street where he caught sight of the great arch of Central Station. He took a deep breath, gathered his thoughts and looked at his watch. 12.30pm. His mind formulated a plan as he crossed the street and entered the station to take refuge from the rain.

James picked one out of the crowd with his eye. Clean shaven, fashionable haircut, pristine shining black loafers, black suit and a ridiculous tie. Accountant or banker was his best guess. A young man, early twenties James thought straight out of university. He looked like he enjoyed a comfortable bed every night, then a hot shower every morning. Probably a good breakfast too. James was standing perfectly still staring at the young man. His eyes sharp with envy. A deep feeling started to grow in his gut but this time it was not one of painful hunger or the flapping and churning of anxiety. It was darker, more sinister. It came over him slowly, the magazine crumpling under his tight clenching fist. Around him people passed by oblivious to the rage engulfing James’ body.

David entered Central Station under the arch and headed towards the little Italian cafe. It was around lunchtime at the bank now. His plan was to have a coffee, calm himself down, then go back to the bank once lunch was over. Apologise to his colleagues and his boss, and then find the details of the customer he was so rude to. He would phone and apologise, presuming she was an existing costumer and the bank had her details. Perhaps he would explain the morning he had had to her. Maybe that would get him some sympathy. Then again, maybe not. Hopefully this plan would work. He had to keep this job, there was no way he could afford to lose it. David plucked the meagre change from his pocket, bought the cheapest coffee on offer, drank it and headed back.

It was madness. Sixteen years working in the city then his world was flipped upside down and James was dropped on his head. He lost his job in the bank when the recession hit. After that James couldn’t afford the rent on his flat in the city and he lost that too. The car had to go as well, no money for that. He had lost more or less everything. It was like his life had been taken but he was not dead. For a long time James felt suicidal. But he was too much of a coward to actually hang himself or pull a trigger and embed a bullet in his brain. So he was forced to go on. He had been fine for a while living in a tiny studio flat, surviving on the wage of a part time bartender which was hardly substantial. The trouble was that he was not fine. Walking home from the bar he worked in, through the centre of Glasgow. He was caught off guard by a cheeky comment from one youth. That was the first time he had felt the rage engulf him like that. All his feelings about the events beforehand came to a peak. He punched the youth in the face. Watched him fall to the ground in pain and then proceeded to almost beat the life out of him. In the end he spent six months in Barlinnie prison. When he got out there was no chance of work. So he ended up homeless, an embarrassment to his family and a sickening disappointment to himself, stuck in the throbbing bustle of Central Station.

His head was throbbing now; the fiery rage had taken him. Across the damp white floor of the station and straight into the eye line of the young man. For some reason he could see it now, more clearly than ever. It was their fault. These self-obsessed arrogant suits. They had caused it. They had lost him his job, his flat, his dignity. They had put him in prison, his eye twitched under this thought. But there was nothing to pull his mind back from the brink this time.

David tried to sidestep the grimey unwashed figure that seemed to be heading straight for him. But the attempt was futile and he was horrified when the grimey unwashed man grabbed at his chest. There was no time to react though. As soon as it happened he felt a cracking sensation from his nose, then a flash of searing pain and his back thudded against the damp floor as the thoughts faded to black.

The powerful hatred compelled James to grab the young man. He clutched at his chest with his own left hand. Sending a right hook directly to the nose. Feeling it crack under the pressure of his fist his deluded mind found it satisfying, even encouraging. He watched the body tumble to the ground. He heard a piercing high pitched scream from his left and a low growl from his right.

The air was pushed from his lungs under the weight of the growling security guard. James’ mind eased slightly, fulfilled by the sight of the blood spraying from the nose of the young man. He felt good. He felt calmer. Satisfied, like some kind of axe-wielding lunatic, by the smell, the free flow and the gorgeous glow of the red liquid.

By Andrew Small