Tom Graham: Blood, Bullets and Blue Stratos

The man in the black leather jacket picked his way across a bleak terrain of broken buildings and burnt-out cars. Reaching the top of a low hill that was all smashed rubble and pulverized concrete, he glanced for a moment at the pale disc of the sun, then stumbled his way down into a dead valley where overturned lorries smoked and smouldered. Brick dust kicked up and clogged his nostrils. An acrid wind gusted along the valley, stinging his eyes. Half blind and choking, he sought shelter in the skeletal remains of a building that rose ominously from the wreckage.

He found himself inside a roofless ruin, all broken walls and empty, gaping windows. And yet, something in the layout of this place stirred up memories. This building had once been familiar to him. It had buzzed and thrived with life. He recalled uniforms, and desks, mountains of paperwork, banter, and bullying, and a rough camaraderie. Had it once been his school?

A sharp voice suddenly cut through the silence. ‘What you standing around like that for? This ain’t a bleedin’ bus stop.’

The man jumped and spun round. Behind a pile of stone and timber that may once have been a desk, a woman was staring sourly at him. That expression — unimpressed, implacable, not-in-the-mood-for-any-of- your -bloody-nonsense — was shockingly familiar.

‘I know you …’ the man muttered. ‘I know your name.’

‘Well bully for you, luv! Award yourself ten points.’

‘Phyllis. Your name’s Phyllis! We knew each other.’

‘In the biblical sense? In your dreams, sonny. Now shift your arse before I stick you in cell 3 with Dirty Dougie Corrigan. There’s a puddle of old sick in cell 3, and I’ve been told Dirty Dougie’s just dropped a shit in the middle of it, so unless you fancy getting handy with a mop and bucket then sling ya hook!’

Phyllis impatiently ushered him through a smashed doorway into the gutted remains of a large room. The ghostly echo of a clacking typewriter drifted through the dead building, a long-gone telephone rang, and the man in the leather jacket said out loud, ‘I worked here. I worked right here .’

He imagined his desk, his telephone, his chair — and then, unbidden, the image came into his mind’s eye of other desks ranged nearby, steel cabinets bulging with files, and police mugshots of wanted men pinned to the walls, jostling for space amid the photos of Page 3 girls and bygone footballers.

Without warning, a young man appeared, spectre-like, seated at his desk, his dark hair parted above his pale, not-quite-mature face. He studied something on his desk, some piece of paperwork, his eyes narrowing and his brow furrowing like a studious schoolboy hard at work.

‘What do you think?’ the young man said suddenly. ‘Looks a bit rough, this one. Reckon you could handle it, Ray?’

Another figure appeared behind him — older, stouter, with a blond moustache, sharp blue eyes and the hard edge of a man well used to showdowns and violence. He cracked his knuckles and leant over the younger man’s desk to examine the paperwork.

‘There’s nowt so rough it puts the frighteners on me , Chrissie-boy,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a close-up.’

He swept up the paper from the young man’s desk and scrutinized it. It was a dog-eared copy of Soapy Knockers magazine.

‘Not so rough as all that, Chris — not with the lights out an’ all. Yeah, I reckon I’d have a little go on this one, if she were drippin’ for it an’ that.’

‘I know you two,’ said the man in the black leather jacket. The two ethereal figures looked round at him. ‘Chris Skelton. Ray Carling. I know you … both of you …’

‘Both of us?’ asked Chris.

‘Or both of these?’ asked Ray, turning the magazine to reveal a massive pair of soapy breasts.

‘We worked together,’ the man in the jacket insisted. ‘In this room. Your desks were here — right here — and mine was here, and just over there was a … there was a woman … dark hair … her name was … her name was … oh, dammit, you boys remember. She was one of us and her desk was right there and she was called …’

His mind reeled, but the name would not come.

‘Why can’t I remember her name? Why can’t I remember?’

Ray exchanged a knowing look with Chris, then tapped the side of his head with his finger.

The man in the jacket saw the gesture and shouted, ‘There’s nothing wrong with my sanity. I know who I am.’

‘If you say so, boss.’

‘I know what’s real and what’s not. And I know that woman’s name. She sat right there and here name was … her name was …’

Furiously, the man grabbed a brick and hurled it against the remains of a wall.

‘Got a temper on ’im, this lad,’ winked Ray.

‘P’raps he should go up against big ’Enry,’ said Chris.

‘That’s what you said before.’ The man in the leather jacket jabbed his finger at Chris. ‘When I first came here, you said — you said I looked like I’d gone ten rounds with big Henry. It’s what you said when I first walked through that door.’

‘What door, boss?’ asked Chris.

Where the door had once been there was now only a ragged hole and heaps of rubble.

‘Ain’t no door here,’ said Ray, chewing his gum. ‘Ain’t nothing no more.’

‘All broken,’ said Chris.

‘All gone.’

‘Busted.’

‘Like you, boss. Broken, and busted.’

The man in the jacket looked from Chris to Ray and back again. ‘What do you mean by that?

‘There’s nothing here for you,’ said Ray, fishing out a cigarette from his breast pocket and sparking it up. ‘You could have gone back where you belong. You had your chance. But you threw it away. You threw yourself away. Don’t you remember?’

Chris turned his fingers into a pair of walking legs and mimed them running, jumping, plummeting. He made a long, descending whistle that ended with a splat.

The man in the jacket backed away, his hands clutching the sides of his head. His mind was reeling. Memories were swilling wildly about inside his skull: of standing atop a high roof with the city laid out all around him; of making a decision, and then starting to run. He remembered sprinting, leaping, falling, an expanse of hard concrete rushing up to meet him.

‘Topped yourself, boss,’ said Chris, taking back his copy of Soapy Knockers and leafing through it. ‘Smashed yourself to pieces.’

‘And everything else along with you,’ put in Ray, letting smoke trail from between his lips. ‘Just look around. See what you done.’

‘I remember …’ the man stammered, trying to piece together the jostling fragments in his mind. ‘The year was … It was 2006. There was an accident. I got … I got shot …’

‘Run over,’ Chris corrected him. ‘Very nasty.’

‘Run over … yes, yes,’ the man said, starting to see the pattern of events forming. ‘And I woke up … But it wasn’t 2006 any more … It was nineteen … It was nineteen-seventy … nineteen-seventy …’

‘… three ,’ Chris and Ray intoned together.

‘Nineteen seventy-three. Yes, that was it,’ said the man. ‘I didn’t know if I was mad, or dead, or in a coma …’

‘Or a mad, dead bloke in a coma,’ piped up Chris. ‘Three for the price of one.’

‘But I did know I had to get back home, back to my own time, back to 2006. And I did it. I got there. But then, it was like … It felt like …’

‘Being dead?’ suggested Ray.

‘Being in a coma?’ added Chris. ‘Being a mad dead bloke in a coma all over again?’