Ross Raisin - Waterline

He wakes, taking a moment to understand by the light outside and by a dim calculation of the TV schedule what time it is. About six, he guesses. Hungry or not hungry, that means all he’s ate in two days is a sausage and a couple of toast biscuits, which is a pure nonsense, clearly.

Fridge: empty, apart from the parmesan. Cupboards: a few bottles of things, a tin of tomatoes and the toast biscuits. He eats all of one packet, chewing drily, and leaves the last couple for emergencies and the sparrow. That’ll do as a starter, he decides, looking out at the garden, and the gloaming coming on, the shed door no shut properly. There is the new pizza carry-out, he minds, but straight away gives the idea a bye: he hasn’t enough cash on his tail, and as well the thought of going out, of walking on the high street and queuing up in the place with its new bright neons and the brand spanking plastic no yet covered in scratches and stuck with chinex. The effort even of thinking about doing that bears on him like a weight. But just at that moment he has a brainwave. The freezer. He’s forgot about it until now and, getting open the door for a look in, it’s easy to see how — it being something of a no-go area, the seal covered all around with a huge furry moulding of ice, like frozen moss. Still, there’s things in here. There’s all kinds of bags and boxes, although you can’t see what any of it is because it’s all glazed over with a thin dust of ice like a postie’s frost, so he puts his hand in and gets brushing it off. Waffles, choc ices, boil-in-the-bag fish in sauce — no thank you very much — peas, the wife’s crispy pancakes, which it’s more than his life is worth stealing from her –

There is a sudden tug at his stomach, a recoil, like the instant of a fall before the insides catch up. His hands are shaking. A dizzy confused sick sensation and he has to grip the side of the fridge-freezer to steady himself.

Crispy pancakes. Bingo tea.

There are peas gone over the floor, but he stays pressed against the fridge without moving. His stomach is aching, and he feels sick. And then he is — a dry, coughed-up retch of thin, clinging dribble. Jesus Christ. He didn’t see this coming; he’d’ve been the better going down the new pizza take-out, all things considered, and he starts to chuckle, his forehead juddering against the freezer. See maybe he would’ve been done in there too, how could you know? They wouldn’t have known how to deal with it if he had, that’s for sure, looking confused at each other in their smart new caps and uniforms — this wouldn’t be in the training.

The box is soft and battered the now, almost a year old. It needs chucking out but as soon as he has the thought he gets the dry boak in his throat again. Bingo tea: crispy pancakes, beans, tinned potatoes, tommy sauce. Her sat eating it and the strange chemically smell of those terrible fucking tatties, then off to the bus and a kiss for him and the boys. Now ye’ll no let these two stay up the night, eh? I want them in their beds when I’m back. And always the wee grin between them as she leaves, because she knows well enough there’ll be a pair of bahookies scootling up the stair when she comes in. He can see her, clear as anything. Her face, beaming, drunk. Mick, I’ve bloody gone and won — footering in her bag for the money — I’ve only bloody gone and won, see, and she pulls it out with a great daft smile like a magician’s assistant. His eyeballs feel cold; he closes them. She won two hundred quid once. They spent a few days in Wemyss Bay and bought a mini television for the kitchen. He can’t mind her winning that much any other time. Just little wins, tiddlies — ten or twenty pound — and she’d never share it, that money, it was hers, she’d declare with glee, and she’d buy herself tights and Barbara Taylor Bradfords.

He minds abruptly the woman next door; him spying on her through the fence. His stomach starts racing. What was he doing? He feels pure scunnered at himself, and he screws the eyes closed but the thought of it won’t let up, the sense, somehow, that she knows.

He realizes then that his forehead is stuck to the freezer.

He tries to pull away but it’s joined fast, and the skin stings when he tugs at it. Bollocks, he cries out loud, and draws back again, slowly this time, but no joy, he’s too long frozen to it with sweat or tears or however it’s happened, it doesn’t matter — he’s glued on the freezer, is all that counts. Bloody eejit. He is laughing, and it jerks on the skin. Leave him alone two minutes and look what happens. He tries a new approach, damping a finger with warm spit and rubbing at the join, repeating the action over and over, hoping he might be able to peel away by fractions, but still it doesn’t seem to be working, the skin feeling scorched now and him beginning to panic. What a way to go: we found him starved in the kitchen with his head stuck to the fridge-freezer. Suddenly geeing himself up, he places his hands either side and rips himself away. He yelps at the sharp burning sensation. Then, stupidly, as it dies to an achy tingle, he checks if there’s any skin left on the ice. There isn’t. He shakes his head. What a fucking haddock, serious, and he turns to bathe the head with some warm water from the tap.

Falling, again the sensation of falling. He rests his head, carefully, sideways on the kitchen table but he can’t get rid of the falling sensation even when he shuts his eyes, so he just stays there motionless, listening to his belly underneath the table away on a merry dance. He can’t see her now. Can’t picture her face. The various parts of her are there still when he tries imagining her — the hair, the jimmeny teeth — but he can’t pull back and get a sense of her, what she looks like, her face.

Ingredients: cooked chicken (2 %), sweetcorn (1 %), bacon (1 %), coconut fat, smoke flavouring, sodium ascorbate, sodium nitrate. . Jesus. If it hadn’t been the asbestos killed her, it would’ve been the crispy pancakes. He turns the box over to read the other end, handling it carefully, like an old photograph. Fifteen minutes under the grill, simple as that.

There isn’t any tinned tatties, or beans, so he grills up the waffles instead, and arranges them on a plate with the pancakes and a few thumps of tommy sauce. He sits a while looking at it. A familiar smell, and a good one, no like they potatoes. But it’s a smell just. And it doesn’t make him want to eat it. His stomach is bad still and he knows the second he puts a bite of this down, it’ll be coming straight back up. So he sits, staring, toying at it with his fork, pulling open a pancake and pressing out some of the shiny cream gloop. Wondering what in hell he’s doing. What, was he going to try and imagine that it’s her or something, stupit, fucking stupit, and he feels instantly sick at the thought of what he’s doing. He pushes the plate aside and stumbles over to the sink.

He cannot sleep properly. Each of the next few nights he wakes in the dark, sweating, the settee hot and clammy against his skin. Staring at the display clock on the video player, waiting for it to be morning. When the dawn does come, and all the familiar shapes in the room start becoming visible, he is up quickly, a restless energy about him. He moves back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, getting the kettle on, both TVs, opening cupboards, then no minding what he’s looking for, shutting them again.

By the afternoons, he’s tired out. No hungry still either. When it gets dark outside again he forces himself to grill up a waffle, but otherwise he doesn’t eat. He stays in front of the television in the living room, not so much looking at the programmes as at the set itself, how familiar it is: the dusty top of the video player; the wee carpet troughs just in front of the broken rollers where it used to stand years ago, before Robbie spilled a Coke bottle over the whole area.