Chapter One: Slipping Away

This is an exerpt from my next novel, Deadline:

CHAPTER ONE: Slipping Away

 An anonymous conglomerate of 3ams in July. Awake, aware, no chance of even the faintest glimmer or flicker of respite. Sleep is elusive now, as it always has been for me. There begins a pain in my chest, which is probably just wind, but no less painful than anything serious. I eat too much, even when my hunger is non-existent, and it has inevitable consequences. I struggle to organise my life into meals; ergo it just descends into a cacophony of crisps and chocolate, washed down with a bottle of Coke or Lucozade, possibly even a can of Red Bull or Tennent’s. But this is it. 3am in July once more and there is nothing to be done. University is but a distant memory, with the economy in a perpetually shambolic state, or so they tell us. The invisible financial deities tell us that the system that they’ve helped engender and maintain isn’t working – well quelle fucking surprise. You tell yourself and those that will listen that you could sort it in an hour, given requisite space to do so. In reality, you’re in two overdrafts. It’s the man, man. Aye it is.

I live in Mount Florida – a place that sounds perhaps more exotic than it is. In reality it is on the Southside of Glasgow, where Hampden Park is. Sometimes I’ll spend a Saturday there watching Queens Park if I can muster the funds and the energy to do so. The area itself is calm and friendly – locals will often give you a wee nod if they recognise you from somewhere. You’ll flash a smile in return, repeating ad nauseum. How do you describe an area that is essentially just shops and houses? Because essentially that is what Mount Florida is. It isn’t rough by any means, but it can hardly be described as posh either., even if a bag being sold in one of the local shops reads;

I’m dead posh, I’m fae Mount Florida!

You might see a scrap every so often, but once a month at most. Even then, it’s probably less than that. You’ll see junkies and alcoholics, but then again you might just be looking in a mirror. We’re all dependent on something or other in some way or other. You’re lying to yourself if you think you’re special.

I live more specifically on Mount Annan Drive in a one-bedroom basement flat. It isn’t often that I come up for air, if at all. Sometimes I just need to wait for the right moment to emerge. One day I found myself sleeping through a whole day, and I mean that. This is no figure of speech, but I have legitimately slept from midnight to midnight – cover to cover. What surprises and astonishes me most about this feat is the pinpoint accuracy of putting my head on the pillow at 12am, before waking exactly 24 hours later. The day, a waste; a film skipped to the end, a book flicked-through, a life unlived. It almost strikes me as impressive, but inevitably ends up depressing the life out of me even further each time I stop to consider it once more. Other days I’ll exist in a state of consciousness that may as well be sleep. I watch videos of Lithuanian-American skateboarder Natas Kaupas – innovator and inventor of the Natas Spin – a trick I only believed to be existent in the Tony Hawk games I’d play so regularly as a young boy approaching adolescence at a speed far too quickly to even consider becoming a skateboarder. I could barely stay on the board, nor afford to purchase all the relevant gear to prevent the inevitable broken bones that would arise. What I admired about the video compilations on YouTube – whether they be from Natas Kaupas, Daewon Song, Rodney Mullen, or anyone – was the ability to take pride in a fall. To get up when knocked down and to even include it as part of the compilation. To show life is not as simple as a stream of unrelentingly beautiful and eloquently executed tricks put to some classic hip-hop from the Big Apple or a Los Angeles punk track from the late 1980s, but a fucking hard slog. You need to show people that slog, or else risk being dismissed as a showboater with nothing to add but an easy grasp of all that is difficult and gruelling in life. 

The speakers on my laptop cry out some fitting lyrics from fIREHOSE’s ‘Brave Captain’, which serves as the video’s soundtrack.

THERE ARE DOUBTS

IN YOUR ABILITY

The only difference is that these videos contain two or three bails at most. My existence contains too many to be put into montage form without becoming a farce, a comedy of errors. I’ve woken up beside an open laptop, penis in hand, having even failed to give myself the pleasure that barely any other human has. I’ve lost friends through ill advised sexual endeavours, as they’ve gone onto better things with better people. I sit alone, pining for those I’ve held for an evening with little to no feeling just because they’re happy and I am otherwise. I’ve attempted several career paths – journalism, teaching, marketing, editing, writing – all to no avail. To put it bluntly, I have bailed far too often and currently see no point in getting up to bail again. Perhaps unsurprisingly I’ve had trouble sleeping ever since that aforementioned day in its entirety, gone and unknown to me. It was as if my body had hit a reset button, allowing a long sleep to compensate for the orthodox need to sleep in shorter nightly spurts on the conventional long-term basis. 

I go out at night usually: the best time to avoid the public’s scrutinous gaze toward my very existence. Given I lack employment, adhering to a normal pattern of daily routine seems pointless. I attempt to find a telephone box to call my mother, who had ordinarily worked nights. My phone had broken six months ago, meaning I was essentially AWOL to those glued to a screen rather than in my immediate vicinity – and I say this having once been one of those people. That said, there comes a time when you stop calling, then they stop calling, you forget people and they, perhaps rightfully, forget you in return. Nevertheless, the time is now right to make the call not made in at least a month. I was shitting myself just to talk to my own mother. The few coins in my possession jangled nonchalantly in my anxious hand – a juxtaposition of oxymoronic metal and flesh in damp, sweaty amalgamation. I inserted the coins, picked up the receiver, placing it gently to my ear, preparing to dial each number with anticipatory anxiety. It seemed too cold to sweat, yet somehow I managed. My hands were clammier than I can recall. That said, how often does one recall the clamminess of their hands? 

With regard to my maternal relationship, it was generally fine, though we were perhaps not as close as either of us would ideally like. The facts were that I hadn’t seen her for well over a year. A call now would either be a pleasant surprise or a stark reminder that she still has a failure for a son. I rolled the dice.

‘The fuck’s this?’

‘Mum? It’s me, Scott.’

‘You havin’ a laugh? It’s 3am. Fuck off.’

It wasn’t my mother – that much was clear. I could only assume the number I had was for someone else. I also hadn’t even clocked the hour at this point, but it was indeed 3am.

I tried the number again. No answer. Not even a solitary ring to humour me. I can only assume they had unplugged their respective landline so as to avoid my second attempt at getting through. This would have to wait for another night. For now I take a walk to Cathkin Park, where Third Lanark used to play before their dissolution in the 1960s. It was an abandoned stadium of forestry and terracing. In truth, it could probably still host a game, albeit one with markedly fewer fans and lax safety regulations. I could ask Simone out and we could go to Cathkin Park, sit with a vegetarian picnic and soak up the rare Glasgow sunshine. Instead, I sit here alone as the day edges ever closer to making itself known. I’ve sat through sunrises before, or at least seen them from the comfort of the night shift. I have watched day and night switch places on more occasions than I could care to name. For once I would like to do so in the company of another rather than of my own volition, on my own arbitrary excursion from convention. I fall asleep in the middle of Cathkin Park for the first time in what feels like a generation or two. I wake up at a time I’m unsure of, but the sun is in full flow, directing waves of radiation toward my person. Joggers and runners lap me on numerous occasions, as many ignore my presence entirely – an ignorance for which I am eternally grateful. I am an assumed sunbather who lost track of himself and his surroundings – it happens to the best of us! I anxiously ponder the potential sunburn before making my exit stage back the way I came in. I still have the bottle of sunscreen my ex bought me as a gag present sitting in a drawer somewhere, unopened.

Just across the road is a sign detailing the beginnings of Scottish (and World) football. Scotland beating England 5-1 on the Bowling Green back in the late 1800s before my eyes. It staggers me that I’d never noticed said sign before, despite walking this path on hundreds of occasions throughout my young life. I continue walking along Cathcart Road toward Mount Florida. It begins to rain slightly as it often does in Glasgow, but I reach home in the nick of time to avoid any sizable soaking. It seems to get heavier as I reach my front door, sheltered as soon as a storm hits. I close the door behind me, attempting to push it in gently, but the wind has other ideas and slams it with a reckless gusto, painting me as an enraged psycho to all those in my close. I mutter a breathless apology to nobody in particular, hoping not to have woken anyone at this relatively early hour. Time was lost. I barely knew what day it was at this point. All I knew was that it was morning. At least life renders distinguishing between day and night relatively easy in comparison with knowing the precise time or date. I feel a slight hunger at this point, so I take a look in the cupboards, as well as a few cursory glances into the fridge and freezer respectively. Two Pot Noodles, some Falafel, some pasta parcels with Spinach and Ricotta, some Quorn nuggets. I’d been vegetarian for a while now, though I would be unable to pinpoint the precise point at which the transition had happened. It was a natural process. I opted for a Chicken and Mushroom Pot Noodle. I boil the kettle, pour the water in, but I’m too hungry to wait for the noodles to cook properly. The noodles are crunchy, inedible, yet I sift through the pot bit by bit, managing to stifle my gag reflex which seems vocal on the issue of the undercooked noodles. Alas I keep shovelling them in until the noodles are drowned in the excess water, at which point I pour the pot down the sink, poking each stray noodle down the plughole. A few rebellious noodles float along with the current of the tap water. I turn the water up, but they only become more rebellious in their pursuit of freedom. After around half a minute, the pot is empty and the noodles are in the plughole. I notice another noodle on the sink’s edge, at which point my gag reflex is fully engaged. I throw all of what I’d just eaten up into the sink, which I’m relieved is empty. Ordinarily I would leave plates, trays, pots, pans and cutlery in the basin to be filthy for another day. In that regard, this was a victory of sorts. I decide on a packet of crisps to compensate, which sates the hunger for the time being. The throbbing pain in my left heel, however, remains unsated for the moment. I pull my left sock off in a state of some discomfort, throwing it onto the pile, leaving the right sock unmoved, unaltered. I rest it on the bed, hoping the pain will subside at least somewhat. To its credit, it does just that eventually. Just another one of those unexplainable inexplicable injuries that arises for no particular reason, before making its merry way out of existence – no frills, no painkillers, just a natural exit as arbitrary as its entry. If you could pinpoint its starting point – the when, the where, the what – perhaps you could pinpoint its origin.

The broken phone sits in the corner alongside the laptop, still in full working order, yet untouched for around a week. I’d been immersed in literature once more – Proust’s Finding Time Again, as well as Infinite Jest, albeit in fits and starts. I opt to open up the laptop again, instead of opening the can of Tennent’s. How odd that life can be condensed into a screen. A meeting of masturbatory fantasies and job descriptions, of Skype interviews with men in suits and some of the most unorthodox fetish porn you could ever dream of encountering. I spend a good deal of the initial time on opening the laptop in a happy medium between the two, playing Tetris – unproductive but by no means filthy, unless the dissolution of shapes on forming straight lines constitutes one of those fetishes.. 

I decide to shave my beard after three weeks of growth, but by the time my distractions have gone, it’s time to leave for work. A month has passed and I am employed once more, though only as a barman in one of the local chain pubs that underpays and overworks its employees – I shan’t name it for legal reasons, though you can make a wild guess. I’d regained some modicum of purpose, though naturally it was far from the postgraduate dream. The one saving grace was I had learned the ropes pretty quickly, meaning I could pour a masterpiece of a pint, even the notoriously awkward Guinness. Inevitably I’d fallen in love within moments of working behind the bar. Her name was Lucy. I’d always been attracted to freckles for as long as I could remember, and it was no different with regard to Lucy’s freckled complexion. She was around my height (5 and a half foot), with hair the colour of oak or cherry cola, often tied up in a ponytail, though sometimes otherwise. She would often smile toward me in a manner that bordered on flirtatious without commitment to any particular act of flirtation. She had also dropped the bombshell of having a boyfriend on the first day of working together, pretty much ending my hopes immediately, or for the time being at least. Acting vulturous should Lucy become single would be a stain on me, having had the issue of acting impulsively before hanging around my neck like an albatross. I left it alone, carried on as normal, despite my inevitable and pathetic attraction to her.

I always attempt to avoid the boss when I walk through the door, just because she’ll ask me how I am. There was no particular malice to her enquiry, but something within me told me that there was. It was the same whenever those that weren’t friends asked how I was. It felt like an assault, because more often than not, I was far from okay. I would usually shrug it off and say the very opposite; therefore, feeling worse about the fact I had lied about my own wellbeing. Telling the truth would, however, have resulted in the drawing of attention toward myself in a manner I didn’t necessarily want, from a person I had no connection with apart from as an underling. 

‘Hi, how are you?’

‘Ah you know.’

With the noncommittal response, I felt as if I’d cracked the enigma code of the small talk, the nonsense, the banal chatter that leads absolutely nowhere. The offensively inoffensive cul-de-sac. Row after row of houses, all the same, families within, middle-aged women handing out their audible questionnaires:

How are you/the kid(s)/the wife/husband/other?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I just don’t fucking know.

Never does one become so aware of oneself, one’s failings, one’s flaws. Fuck you, that’s how I am.

How to explain such a disdain without sounding like an ungrateful so-and-so? It seems impossible. How to talk to people who are ignorant of the anger you’ve been feeling for the last decade? The world is falling apart and a great deal of the punters have other inconsequential things to be angry about. Their pints of flat English, room-temperature IPA, spiked with soma. For when the hard-times open their eyes, as they so often do these days. 

The pain in my foot returns with a vengeance, though I’m too afraid to tell the boss. Instead, I continue to work, wincing with each and every step I take. Nobody asks if I’m okay, but Lucy starts up a conversation with me to inadvertently take my mind away from the pain.

‘Did I mention I’m in a band? Caution Horses.’

‘That the band name? How’d you come up with that?’

‘You ever driven behind one of those horse trucks that just says ‘Caution Horses’ on the back?’

I enjoyed her faint Edinburgh accent that, dare I say, bordered on sounding English to a certain extent. In fact, I wasn’t certain it was from Edinburgh, and it could just as easily have been English.

‘Aye.’

‘There you go!’

It seemed so obvious when she said it. I felt stupid.

‘What kind of music is it?’

‘Ah, you know. Bit of this, bit of that. We’re mainly kind of shoegaze with a bit of post-rock. Think MBV or Mogwai kind of interspersed.’

‘MBV?’

She laughed.

‘My Bloody Valentine. Sorry, I shouldn’t assume everybody knows the acronym of a band, especially a band like that!’

‘No, no, I should have known that to be fair. I’ll have to come and watch you sometime. When’s the next gig?’

‘Not for a while. The drummer’s gone home for the summer, so we’ll be reconvening when we’re all back together. Think we’ve got something planned in a few months. St Luke’s. I’ll let you know!’

‘Right, cheers.’

With that, she made her way and the pain in my foot returned. We were about to get the standard Thursday night rush, and I’d have to stand on the foot all day. I persevered to the benefit of absolutely nobody beyond upper management, let alone myself.

I manage to get myself home in one piece, though I’m reminded that my room is an absolute disgrace, as if I’m waiting for someone else to clean the mess up. There are empty litre bottles of Coke, as well as beer cans, Pringle tubes, wet towels, solitary socks, dirty underwear, and what I can only assume to be a multitude of filth, dirt, germs, earthen bugs of no real purpose. I count them, metaphorically at least, like one would count sheep, before falling asleep at around 2am. I have one dream which is interrupted by my 9:20am alarm, in which I’m on a mattress in the corner of a supermarket, holding onto a friend from years gone by; a friend not seen in a long-time; a friend I have no business dreaming about. Alas, I dream of her, us. I think little of it, as dreams can often be arbitrary, at least more often than not.

As far as I can recall, it’s Annabel in the dream. It springs to mind that we had drunkenly made-out (to use the American phrase) at a house party, but we hadn’t taken things any further beyond that. I’d been interested in somebody else at the time, but then it transpired that that someone else had no interest in me. Now I look back in regret at what could, perhaps should have been at one point. We live to dream once more.

That anonymous conglomerate of 3ams I spoke of before; I no longer see them. Instead, I sleep earlier, inevitably rising earlier and maintaining a healthier circadian rhythm as a whole. I cannot pretend to be overwhelmed with content, but it’s a start. I can maintain a steady if underwhelming cash flow whilst I continue to look for somewhere to begin a postgraduate career. I’d been paid on Friday, so I opted to take the Saturday – one of my only two nights off this particular week – and spend it in transit, returning to Carlisle to briefly see my mother. The journey down is always an absolute pleasure – the rolling hills of the Scottish Lowlands that are often overshadowed by their Highland cousins, the forgotten hinterlands of one of the northernmost points of England, overshadowed by an inevitably London-centric system. These are the lands, towns, cities, villages, people; all of whom we forget unwillingly in favour of the aforementioned entities in which they find themselves shadowed. The train rolls into Carlisle at noon. My mum’s place is only a short walk from the station. I opt to stop at the off-licence on the way in order to pick up a few cans for myself and a bottle of relatively cheap wine for my mother. I spot a flower stand on the way, though I opt not to purchase any. I reach the flat, fairly certain of having the correct address, having only been to visit once since they’d moved south. I buzz for the flat to no avail. I sit outside for a while in the vain hope she may be out shopping or otherwise occupied. I have no phone through which I can reach her, so all I can do is wait. I wait until the last train home, but nobody even enters or leaves the close throughout the entire day. I take some cash out, purchase a bottle of water using the self-service machine in the Co-Op, in order to get some change for the payphone. My mother’s number is in my pocket, but it’s smudged ever-so slightly. I make a lucky guess and reach her on the first instance.

‘Mum, it’s me. I’m in Carlisle. Where are you?’

‘Alright son. I’m just in the hospital. I’ve been trying to reach you. D’ye no have your phone on you?’

‘Hospital? What’s happened?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing serious. Just a broken arm. I had a bit of a fall down those stairs in the close. Dave is here with me though. He’s looking after me. You needn’t worry yersel’.’

I made my way to the hospital, relieved it was nothing beyond an injury. I called work and explained everything. I would need a couple of days off. The boss said it was fine and that I should come back whenever I’m ready. I picked up the flowers I’d passed up before, keeping the wine for myself instead.

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