Philip Nutman - Cities of Night

It was gone.

He woke with a start when his arm slipped from the table, and he realized he’d dozed off. The clock on the mantle said 10:05; he’d been asleep for forty minutes. No, not asleep, somewhere between the two states of consciousness, like that guy in the Stephen King book, The Dead Zone . He’d been in the Dead Zone, a state of blankness, swimming on tides outside himself.

He’d felt this way once before when he was a little kid. He couldn’t clearly remember, but as he reached out, a lost circuit reactivated, a circuit long dormant, burnt out by an overload of input.

Alex.

Alex was the key.

Alex had climbed on the roof of the garden shed, showing off. Jamie had been withdrawn all day; then, when Alex had struggled up through the branches of the tree, he’d known his brother was going to fall long before the corrugated metal gave way, throwing Alex into the flower bed below.

He’d known.

How?

He had no idea. Why hadn’t he remembered what happened that day? He remembered the rest: Alex taken to hospital by a neighbour; their mother angry and upset — angry at Alex for climbing, upset at not having a car and being dependent on the neighbour; Alex with his leg in plaster for six weeks, Jamie envious because his brother didn’t have to go to school.

Instead of relieving the apprehension, the unexpected recall increased his tension, the sweetmeat dread turning into anxious broken glass — sharp, stabbing — as his stomach churned.

The feeling, a gossamer strand of a priori knowledge, came to him again as a set of sensations: smells, textures, sounds — all alien yet terribly familiar.

Darkness.

Dust.

Cold stone.

Echoes. Voices in a cave.

A girl’s voice. Giggly. Drunk.

(bored bored bored)

(bitch)

He tried to amplify the sensations.

(…n’t like you…)

He tried to see.

(ibson… slut…)

But all he could perceive was frustration, traces of feelings, snatches of thought.

(…cking waste… time… Friday…)

The sensory input jumped and was replaced by overwhelming blackness, the rushing cold and pain.

(PAIN PAIN PAIN)

The world flying apart.

It was now 10:40, and he felt sick again. He started retching until his throat hurt, forcing him to swallow cold tea to ease the ache.

Something was wrong with Alex. Something worse was going to happen.

(What?)

But how could he find his brother before it

(What?)

was too late?

Alex unscrewed the bottle of cider, took a long swig, then passed it to Staff. Alison Gibson, Adam’s sister, was giggling as she sat in the old wheelchair in the middle of the cellar cradling an almost empty half-pint bottle of Bacardi in her lap. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. The girl was nearly out of her skull.

“I’m bored,” she said.

“Join the club,” Staff replied.

Alex could just make out his face in the cellar’s gloom, the only light coming from small windows along the far wall near the ceiling, orange light from the street lamps outside. It was barely enough to see by but dark enough for teenage secrets, of which Alison had many. Some he knew: She’d lost her virginity at thirteen, by sixteen she’d already had three affairs with married men (one a senior member of the church), and she regularly stole cosmetics from department stores. She’d told him most of this the morning he’d snuck into the vicarage to fuck her stupid right under Reverend Gibson’s nose. She’d also given him his first blow job on the roof of the church hall one summer night. They’d gone out for awhile after that — his mother had been delighted that he was dating the reverend’s daughter — but he soon grew tired of her unfaithfulness. Alison was a slut, pure and simple. She couldn’t get enough, and he’d wanted a steady, monogamous relationship, at least for awhile.

Staff drank deep from the bottle of Bulmers, then passed it back to him. Alison fingered the rum bottle. No one spoke for several beats, and he decided it was time to piss. Alex gave Staff the bottle, belching as he left the room for the toilet next door.

As he pissed off a full bladder, he felt light-headed, like he’d smoked another joint, and thought of rolling one when he rejoined Staff. But as he walked in, Alison’s excited groans alerted him to the drunken passion before his eyes could adjust to the gloom. Coming nearer, he saw that Staff had the girl’s red dress up around her waist, his right hand working inside her knickers as they French-kissed. Alison was trying to undo his belt. Alex picked up the cider, belching. Alison moaned.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she murmured as Staff stopped kissing her mouth, moving to her neck. Alex came closer. She reached out for him, found his cheek, touched him gently. “Kiss me,” she said, then groaned again as Staff moved his fingers in and out of her twat. Alex reached her, their tongues entwining. Thoughts from the past — Alison blowing him in the back row of the cinema, spreading her legs for him on the vicarage floor — shot into focus, a blend of disgust and arousal clashing inside him.

He stepped behind her, and she tried to kiss his mouth but couldn’t reach. He ran his tongue over her ear, feeling her shiver as he wrapped his arms around her, cupping her generous breasts in his hands as she leaned back against his chest. Staff removed her knickers, still working his fingers in and out of her body, harder, faster. Alison gasped.

“Slower.”

Staff took no notice. His belt undone, she tried to get his cock out. “No, slowly ,” she said. He grunted.

Alex’s hands were under her sweater, kneading the large breasts. He grasped hard. Alison squealed like a stuck pig.

“Don’t—”

“Sssssshhh.”

He saw Staff reach for the cider bottle. Then she cried out as he replaced his fingers with the glass neck. She started to struggle in Alex’s arms, but his limbs were immobile. Months of working out with weights in the school gym had increased both his strength and his size; she couldn’t break his grasp.

“No, don’t — that hurts!”

Staff worked the bottle in.

Out.

In.

Out.

In.

She cried again, and Alex felt tears splash the backs of his hands. He felt disgust and frustration. And a glimmer of pleasure.

She was getting what she deserved, the prick-teasing bitch.

That was the booze and the dope talking, not his true self, he realized. His sanity flashed as a sick, secret part of him rose up from a hidden place.

Alison cried freely, mumbling “nononononononononono” over and over.

“The wheelchair,” Staff said, removing the bottle.

Alex hesitated.

This is wrong.

But his dark side countered the thought, throwing up all the years he’d been snubbed by girls; the ones at Newbridge who constantly made fun of him; the ones in his early teenage years: a torrent of rejection and humiliation. Frances Clarke, daughter of the teacher who’d made his days at Newbridge such a misery, ratting on him for stealing a library book, her upper-class accent ringing in his ears.

Hurst took the book.

Frances and her stuck-up friend Melanie the fat pig laughing at him, telling him he’d never be anything, that he was worthless, no girl would —

“The wheelchair,” Staff said forcefully.

Alex complied.

He felt like Alex the Droog from A Clockwork Orange about to do the old in-out-in-out.

He manhandled Alison over to the chair as Staff led the way.

“ NO!”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Alex stumbled to the front, holding her hands down as Staff moved behind her, Alison’s arse pulled up over the back of the chair. Staff tugged his jeans down, his prick emerging, pointing like a divining rod in the gloom, searching blind for her hole.