Michael Robertson: Crash

One of the looters kept Tommy’s head in place with a steel-toe-capped boot. It looked like he was trying to brand the tread into the side of the kid’s face. Biting down on his bottom lip, the looter forced his foot down, seemingly putting everything he had into it.

Pinned by his head, the little boy was utterly powerless, and all he could do was scream. “MUM! MUM! MUM! MUM!”

Marie responded like an enraged primate and shook the cage. One of the looters grabbed a broom handle from the cab of the truck, slid it through a hole in the cage and jabbed hard into one of her ample breasts. She squealed like a pig stuck with a sword.

The man who had Tommy beneath his foot got distracted by the commotion, which allowed the boy to slip free and sit up. The side of his face that had been forced into the road had thick blood leaking from several deep cuts, and his face had already swelled to twice its usual size. The bruising looked like a hideous birth defect.

However, he wasn’t up for long because the man with the steel toecaps kicked him back over and directed, “Stay down, you little bastard or we’ll rape your mum and skin her alive.”

Chris clamped his hands over Michael’s ears.

Tommy sobbed until the truck edged forwards. His eyes then jumped from his face, and he found his words again. “Mum! Mummy! Help me, Mummy! Mum!”

The engine bellowed, Tommy cried, Marie screamed, Frank roared, and Chris’ pulse thumped in his ears like a kick drum, the throbbing of it sending sharp pain drilling through his temples.

Locked in a maniacal fit, Dean cackled at the sky, his pointy nose and gaunt face making him look like Mr Punch. He then pulled the clutch up so the truck moved forwards.

From the way his son was fighting against his restraint, Chris wondered whether the images he was making in his mind would be worse than the reality of what was happening outside. As he watched the thick tread on the huge tires paw at Tommy’s hair, biting into the back of his head like a circular saw chewing into polystyrene, he sincerely hoped not and didn’t want to risk letting him go to find out.

The boy screamed so loudly Chris thought all of the glass in the cul-de-sac would crack. He thought his heart would crack too, and he fought harder against his thrashing son to keep him restrained. When he felt like he couldn’t fight the boy’s will any further, he let go. However, instead of looking outside as Chris thought he wanted to, Michael fell to the floor in a ball, scuttled beneath some blankets and covered his ears, desperate to block out the chaos as best as he could. He then started singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to mask the noise. He was so young. Chris had to nudge him and put a finger to his lips because he didn’t want to looters to hear.

While beeping the horn, Dean howled and laughed, the vehicle’s engine releasing a war cry under the weight of his heavy foot. The whole truck lifted from the ground like it was trying to slowly mount a particularly steep curb.

The cacophony of chaos bombarded them from all sides. Frank wailed, Marie, who’d been pinned by several women in the cage because she was a danger to them as well as herself, let out louder screams, the engine roared, the horn beeped, Dean laughed, and Tommy shrieked.

Hair came away from the back of Tommy’s head in huge chunks like tufts of grass. Flesh and blood clung to the roots instead of soil, and huge patches of sticky skin were exposed on his scalp. His head looked like a half-eaten apple.

Other than Michael, it seemed the only person that wasn’t watching was George. He had the resigned look of a man with a heavy heart. Chris could see a kindness in him that, if he had the opportunity to appeal to, could possibly keep both him and his son alive.

Crunch, the truck fell as Tommy’s head gave way like a watermelon. Dean cut the engine, silence undulating outwards across the estate like the blood from the deceased boy.

Chris looked at Marie, whose face was locked in a silent scream, her full cheeks hanging like used teabags. Frank dropped his head and shook with silent sobs. It was like seeing the alpha male accepting that he no longer had the power to lead. He was useless and just needed to hurry up and die. The men, even the weasel with the tennis racket, were locked in stunned silence, and none of them looked at the aftermath of the ordeal. Even the houses surrounding the scene seemed to hold their breaths as stillness spread out across London.

When Chris finally looked down, Michael was staring back at him. Looking at his little boy, his face now paler than ever, Chris didn’t know what to say. Tommy was Michael’s best friend.

Then, starting low like a distant air-raid siren, Marie started wailing. It rapidly grew in volume, and before long, it was a sustained and brutal primal roar. It was as if Marie were having her soul gouged from her mouth with red-hot spoons. Even Dean seemed shocked by the animal noise. It turned Chris’ blood cold and he, like everyone else, remained frozen and listened.

Chris predicted the chaos from Greece would come over to England months ago, but there was no way he could have known just how violent things would turn out. He thought they had too many structures in place for everything to collapse. He thought a civil society couldn’t turn feral in such a short space of time. He now wondered why he never saw it coming. The signs were plain to see, and it occurred to Chris that society was only civil because of the fear of punishment. Maybe ‘civil’ was the wrong word for the world he lived in. Maybe society was merely compliant.

“So you spend your whole life at work for what? To lose your job?”

Stood in their vast kitchen, the huge expanse of white tiled floor between them, Chris stared at Diane. Her tight tanned face looked like it belonged on the body of a lizard, or wrapped around a wallet. He felt inclined to punch her squarely on her thin red lips. It had been a long time since he’d fantasized about kissing them because kissing her was like kissing an elbow. “Why don’t you get your lips done?”

Her tight mouth pulled tighter. “That again? Seriously, Chris?”

“What do you mean ‘again’?”

“You made a comment about my lips a few years back. What’s wrong with my lips?”

“A few years back?” Chris laughed. “There’s nothing wrong with them.” He paused, his blue eyes fixed on the thin strips on her face. “It’s just—”

“It’s just what?”

Laughing, Chris said, “I get it now.”

She frowned hard. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The resentment you’re showing me at the suggestion of doing your lips. I get it. You didn’t appreciate me saying it a while back, so you decided to have every other part of your body altered, but not your lips. You’re doing it just to spite me, aren’t you?”

Resting against the Aga, Diane scoffed, “Get over yourself. Anyway, I haven’t had every other part of my body done.”

Counting a list with his fingers, he said, “You’ve had Botox, fake boobs, liposuction, a nose job, you’ve had your skin sanded, electrolysis… you’ve even bleached your arsehole. Not that I’ve been near that since our wedding night.” Chris then tried to remember the last time that they’d had sex. When he couldn’t, he thought about how he’d rather make love to his grandma anyway, and she’d been dead for twenty-five years. “Anyway, I’ve not lost my job, Diane, I’ve taken a pay cut.”

Because she was halfway through an exercise DVD when he walked in, she was dressed from head to toe in cerise and black Lycra. Chris wondered if she’d spent more time getting ready than actually exercising. With her hands on her narrow hips, she said, “Half, Chris. Half of your wages. That’s more like a pay decapitation.”