Things hadn’t been going Guy’s way for years. So many years, in fact, he couldn’t even remember what his way would have been. She’d left when the dog had died, and, professionally, he hadn’t had a decent role in a play or a movie for aeons. Parts in TV commercials had paid the bills for a while, not that selling coffee and cold remedies nourishes an actor’s soul. But even the cold remedies work had dried up.
Until recently, he’d felt like a wave-dumped surfer, tumbling deep in the black belly of a wave, holding his breath, just biding his time, waiting for the raging spume above to roll away. When the light appeared, he’d simply orientate himself and swim to the surface. But of late, Guy had become aware that in his life, no matter where he looked, the light simply never came. He’d struggled and kicked, but to no avail. Desperation had come and gone. And now he was left with quiet understanding and resignation. Thankfully, however: he lived in a free country, he had control over his mental and physical faculties, and he was a white male. And tonight, for a change, that would all come together to help him make things go his way.
Whilst Sydney’s millions lay in their beds, sweating and kicking out their frustration at the thinnest of bedsheets, outside, dressed unremarkably, if visibly, in a white teeshirt, blue checked shorts and running shoes, which he’d never jogged a step in, a bespectacled Guy trod Sydney’s humid streets, sweating and sober. The spectacles were a new and disappointing development. As Guy had quicksanded his way into middle-age, his body and mind had started changing. First it was grey hair, then hair growing in some places, receding in others. Now soft focus eyes, a fondness for home improvement and gardening shows, injuries and aches he hadn’t done much to deserve, and a memory for names, which seemed to have more blank pages than full ones. His stomach had started taking issue with red wine, chilli and garlic. He felt as if some ‘life’ brochure containing ‘coming attractions’ had been handed out at birth, and Guy had some how missed out on his copy. Every new development came as a complete surprise. He’d had a defined set of abs and was a vital young man – he’d even been called ‘nubile’ once – he’d run, cycled and done press ups. Then, one day, he woke up with a pudding belly and creaky knees. And sat down for his morning piss. It was slow-drip death.
All he knew for certain now was that as yesterday’s breathed air was being replaced with today’s fresh, unbreathed supply, the urban streets stood silent. Not even the spindly inner city trees hosted any nightlife. Instead they stood silent and trapped, witnesses to the rawness of eking out a living in tiny squares of grey dust protected from the sun by burger wrappers and drinks cans. But then if people had no respect for themselves, it was probably no surprise their environment took a beating too.
Guy walked the walk of a man in a reflective mood. His only companions were the sad buildings of a public housing estate; built apparently by the lowest bidder and at the same level of social responsibility as animal shelters and veterinary practices, which were bound to provide cages for their charges. And there was the stench, which invaded his nostrils from garbage bins, brimming with the leftovers of the New Year celebrations and bursting with fevered bacterial colonies.
He’d been walking for twenty minutes, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d soon be running out of this postcode, which he’d taken a lot of care choosing – and not for its historical value or its awe-inspiring beauty.
In the darkness, he sighed to himself. Just as teeth invariably stop aching when you take a seat in the dentist’s waiting room, and you can never find a cop when you need one, Guy was starting to worry that his quest would fail, and he would spend the entire evening alone. Just his fucking luck; which was, of course, par for his particular course. He sighed out loud, but determined to keep walking – well, what did he have to go home to, other than an empty bed and a door-mat strewn with unopened bills. He was here, and he was staying here. Having spent too many long hours with a magnifying glass going over his personality, amongst his other moments of clarity and conclusions, Guy had discerned that when he committed to an idea or decision, he was like a dog with a bone until he’d managed to do what he set out to do. Was he tenacious? Or was he simply, as one famed author had said about himself and his eventually successful literary peers, ‘just too stupid to give up.’
Guy looked ahead to the other side of the street, to a section near the end of the road, where a street light had failed to strike up, and the rhythm of light and dark was now interrupted. Instead of there being a sanctuary of light, keeping the night’s darkness at bay, the street was sucked into a black hole of uncertainty.
Directly beneath the brightness of a street lamp, Guy crossed the road in full view of the empty world, stepped onto the pavement beneath another lamp’s glow and strode towards the next lamp, beyond which lay the black void.
Guy swallowed heavily and walked beneath the bright arc of the last lamp. With his heart quickening with anticipation, like a performer ready to begin, he made his way across the brightly lit stage, and at the other side of the beam, without hesitation, bravely he stepped out, his foot vanishing into the beckoning darkness. Not long now, surely.
If you didn’t know what he was up to, you might be forgiven for thinking he was an agent, desperate to reach a secret rendezvous. Or he was some alien, or time traveler, on course to locate the land’s only remaining space portal cleverly hidden in a benighted urban streetscape?
With his retinas used to the help of the bright lamps, and with no night vision to speak of, he didn’t even see the two heavily-set men step out in the darkness and block his path. They reeked of smoke, and judging by their beery breath, one was substantially taller than both the other man and Guy.
“You got a light there, buddy?” boomed the tall one, who sounded as if he were in his mid-twenties and, judging by the tone of his request, any career in a customer service industry would be short lived.
Guy stopped. “No. Sorry.”
“Well, just your wallet then? And your phone.” sneered the other.
“What?”
“You heard.”
“Oh thank God.” said Guy.
“What?”
“I’ve been walking for ages. I’m bushed.”
Guy’s eyes were beginning to form rudimentary images in the darkness. He peered at the men, who, he was sure, must now be looking at each other, perplexed.
“Are you on something, mate?” said the bigger one.
“No. Just high on life. Living the fucking dream.” said Guy sarcastically.
“Buddy the wallet and the phone alright.”
“Hey here’s an idea. How about ‘NO’.”
“What?” said the short one.
“Mate, the easy way or the hard way.”
”The hard way please. It’s taken me yonks to find you. Or someone just like you.”
In the dark, he couldn’t see if they were frowning, but, by the silence, he imagined they were. He suspected, that just as barristers never ask a question to which they don’t know the answer, the muggers’ script sheet, from which these guys were reading, had never strayed down this particular path.
“Buddy, just cut the shit and hand over the gear, or I’ll fuck you up.”
“Please do. Fuck up away. I was beginning to wonder when you were going to get around to the physical assault.”
One of the men quickly stepped back and forwards again, agitated, as if he’d just seen a card trick he couldn’t believe.
“What?” continued Guy. “Am I supposed to act all surprised. Well, that’s what I’m here for.”
“What the fuck, man? This dude’s mental.” The shorter man mumbled. “Watch it, he’s probably tooled up.”
“No, I’m not ‘tooled up’. So can we just get on with it?” Guy mumbled back to the two men, mocking them.
‘Mate, are you for real?” said the big man.
“Never been more real. I’m here to die. And you’re going to do it or me.”
“Fuck off.” said the shorter man.
“Mate, if you’re that keen on dying,” said the big man, “why don’t you just go home and get stuck into your bathroom cabinet. Just give me your phone and wallet first.”
“Because if you do it, I also get to do society a good deed by removing from it scumbags, who might otherwise be doing this to some innocent person and potentially ruining a happy family with your selfishness. Think of me as supersized entrapment. So come on. Fuckstick, shut your big talk and get on with it. The sooner you kill me, the sooner society can start relishing its last few days of your dubious company, before you get locked up for ever. And get anally raped every night for the rest of your worthless lives.”
Now Guy was sure they were frowning, as the shorter one was nodding his head backwards, indicating to the other that he’d prefer to leave now.
“And just so there are no misunderstandings,” Guy whispered, “I will be putting up a motherfucker of a fight, so you will have to kill me. Come on, then. When you’re ready.”
“Man, why are you whispering?”
“Because, Einstein, I don’t want anyone interrupting us. It’s taken me ages to sort this out.”
“Mate, we could just do you now. And say you started it. And we’d be home free.”
“Ha.” Guy smirked, genuinely amused. “Well at least you have a good sense of humour. I imagine this isn’t your first offence. Damn, it’s a pity I won’t be in the courtroom. You’ll be standing handcuffed in the dock, looking at 25 to life, with your families sobbing their hearts out, and your barrister says, ‘And the victim told the defendants that he’d walked over to their suburb that night to cajole them into killing him in order to ruin their lives’. The whole court room will piss themselves. Get real, you dickhead.”
The men flexed their arms and rolled their heads on their necks, preparing. All it had taken was a simple word like ‘dickhead’ to create the desired response.
“So what’s it feel like to be the victim for once? Come on. Stabby stabby.”
The bigger man reached into his pocket, but the other nervously shuffled his feet and took a backwards step, distancing himself or getting ready to bolt. Guy glared at them, ready for the fight of his life to ensure his death. But the man took his hand out of his pocket, holding nothing. If Guy hadn’t put in so much effort into engineering this situation, and if it wasn’t so important for him to be here in the first place, he might have just walked away, bored. But then again, it was interesting to watch these two; to be privy to the decision-making process in the shallow end of the gene pool. If these lumpen dullards were anything to go by, it was astonishing that society worked at all.
Guy sighed to himself. He knew this scenario was now just far too complicated for these two to fathom. He could almost hear their brains short-circuiting. The shoe was now firmly on the other foot and kicking them up the arse. It obviously wasn’t much fun being a victim.
From the street corner, behind the two men, a large, dark coloured Ford sedan quietly prowled into the street. With no headlights cutting the night, Guy’s heart quickened with hope– perhaps the car contained these two morons’ cohorts or even their bosses. These two would need to save face and do the deed, which Guy was so intent on having done. But as the car turned into the street, its full beam headlights lit up the entire world and spotlit the crowd of three; from the car’s radiator grille, blue and red lights filled the street, running in a huge merry-go-round across the fronts of the surrounding houses.
“Oh shit.” said Guy and the two men in unison.
The car stopped, and two uniformed cops jumped out and headed directly for the group.
“Don’t you blokes move a bloody muscle.” said the cop from the car’s passenger side brandishing a weapon.
The driver called into his radio.
“Unit seventy two. We have three men in Cowper Street. Repeat, three men. Possible assault in progress. One more unit required to assist. Over.”
The two men standing in front of Guy turned to show the cops open palms, protesting their innocence and one pointed at Guy, but the cop responded by aiming a Tazer squarely at the big man.
“Move one more muscle, sunshine. And I’ll move them all for you. And you won’t be happy.”
“Unit fifty en route. ETA One minute. Over.” A female voice replied over the radio.
From what sounded like only a few roads away, a police siren wailed into the night sky.
“Copy that. Out.” said the driver walking towards the two men. “Now Danno. Tommy boy. Nice night for a stroll? So who have you chosen as tonight’s lucky contestant?”
With the two would-be muggers positioned between him and the cops, Guy snatched his wallet and phone from his pockets, and, with them clearly in his hands above his head, he backed away from the two men and headed towards the police, now in the role of relieved, potential victim. Shit. He couldn’t even commit suicide properly.
Originally from England, JON KENYON has been living in Australia for the last sixteen years. For many years, he was a copywriter and Creative Director in London and Sydney advertising agencies and radio stations. He has written plays, screenplays and novels, and he has been published in the UK and Australia. He blogs at www.soisitjustmeorwhat.blogspot.com
Until recently, he’d felt like a wave-dumped surfer, tumbling deep in the black belly of a wave, holding his breath, just biding his time, waiting for the raging spume above to roll away. When the light appeared, he’d simply orientate himself and swim to the surface. But of late, Guy had become aware that in his life, no matter where he looked, the light simply never came. He’d struggled and kicked, but to no avail. Desperation had come and gone. And now he was left with quiet understanding and resignation. Thankfully, however: he lived in a free country, he had control over his mental and physical faculties, and he was a white male. And tonight, for a change, that would all come together to help him make things go his way.
Whilst Sydney’s millions lay in their beds, sweating and kicking out their frustration at the thinnest of bedsheets, outside, dressed unremarkably, if visibly, in a white teeshirt, blue checked shorts and running shoes, which he’d never jogged a step in, a bespectacled Guy trod Sydney’s humid streets, sweating and sober. The spectacles were a new and disappointing development. As Guy had quicksanded his way into middle-age, his body and mind had started changing. First it was grey hair, then hair growing in some places, receding in others. Now soft focus eyes, a fondness for home improvement and gardening shows, injuries and aches he hadn’t done much to deserve, and a memory for names, which seemed to have more blank pages than full ones. His stomach had started taking issue with red wine, chilli and garlic. He felt as if some ‘life’ brochure containing ‘coming attractions’ had been handed out at birth, and Guy had some how missed out on his copy. Every new development came as a complete surprise. He’d had a defined set of abs and was a vital young man – he’d even been called ‘nubile’ once – he’d run, cycled and done press ups. Then, one day, he woke up with a pudding belly and creaky knees. And sat down for his morning piss. It was slow-drip death.
All he knew for certain now was that as yesterday’s breathed air was being replaced with today’s fresh, unbreathed supply, the urban streets stood silent. Not even the spindly inner city trees hosted any nightlife. Instead they stood silent and trapped, witnesses to the rawness of eking out a living in tiny squares of grey dust protected from the sun by burger wrappers and drinks cans. But then if people had no respect for themselves, it was probably no surprise their environment took a beating too.
Guy walked the walk of a man in a reflective mood. His only companions were the sad buildings of a public housing estate; built apparently by the lowest bidder and at the same level of social responsibility as animal shelters and veterinary practices, which were bound to provide cages for their charges. And there was the stench, which invaded his nostrils from garbage bins, brimming with the leftovers of the New Year celebrations and bursting with fevered bacterial colonies.
He’d been walking for twenty minutes, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d soon be running out of this postcode, which he’d taken a lot of care choosing – and not for its historical value or its awe-inspiring beauty.
In the darkness, he sighed to himself. Just as teeth invariably stop aching when you take a seat in the dentist’s waiting room, and you can never find a cop when you need one, Guy was starting to worry that his quest would fail, and he would spend the entire evening alone. Just his fucking luck; which was, of course, par for his particular course. He sighed out loud, but determined to keep walking – well, what did he have to go home to, other than an empty bed and a door-mat strewn with unopened bills. He was here, and he was staying here. Having spent too many long hours with a magnifying glass going over his personality, amongst his other moments of clarity and conclusions, Guy had discerned that when he committed to an idea or decision, he was like a dog with a bone until he’d managed to do what he set out to do. Was he tenacious? Or was he simply, as one famed author had said about himself and his eventually successful literary peers, ‘just too stupid to give up.’
Guy looked ahead to the other side of the street, to a section near the end of the road, where a street light had failed to strike up, and the rhythm of light and dark was now interrupted. Instead of there being a sanctuary of light, keeping the night’s darkness at bay, the street was sucked into a black hole of uncertainty.
Directly beneath the brightness of a street lamp, Guy crossed the road in full view of the empty world, stepped onto the pavement beneath another lamp’s glow and strode towards the next lamp, beyond which lay the black void.
Guy swallowed heavily and walked beneath the bright arc of the last lamp. With his heart quickening with anticipation, like a performer ready to begin, he made his way across the brightly lit stage, and at the other side of the beam, without hesitation, bravely he stepped out, his foot vanishing into the beckoning darkness. Not long now, surely.
If you didn’t know what he was up to, you might be forgiven for thinking he was an agent, desperate to reach a secret rendezvous. Or he was some alien, or time traveler, on course to locate the land’s only remaining space portal cleverly hidden in a benighted urban streetscape?
With his retinas used to the help of the bright lamps, and with no night vision to speak of, he didn’t even see the two heavily-set men step out in the darkness and block his path. They reeked of smoke, and judging by their beery breath, one was substantially taller than both the other man and Guy.
“You got a light there, buddy?” boomed the tall one, who sounded as if he were in his mid-twenties and, judging by the tone of his request, any career in a customer service industry would be short lived.
Guy stopped. “No. Sorry.”
“Well, just your wallet then? And your phone.” sneered the other.
“What?”
“You heard.”
“Oh thank God.” said Guy.
“What?”
“I’ve been walking for ages. I’m bushed.”
Guy’s eyes were beginning to form rudimentary images in the darkness. He peered at the men, who, he was sure, must now be looking at each other, perplexed.
“Are you on something, mate?” said the bigger one.
“No. Just high on life. Living the fucking dream.” said Guy sarcastically.
“Buddy the wallet and the phone alright.”
“Hey here’s an idea. How about ‘NO’.”
“What?” said the short one.
“Mate, the easy way or the hard way.”
”The hard way please. It’s taken me yonks to find you. Or someone just like you.”
In the dark, he couldn’t see if they were frowning, but, by the silence, he imagined they were. He suspected, that just as barristers never ask a question to which they don’t know the answer, the muggers’ script sheet, from which these guys were reading, had never strayed down this particular path.
“Buddy, just cut the shit and hand over the gear, or I’ll fuck you up.”
“Please do. Fuck up away. I was beginning to wonder when you were going to get around to the physical assault.”
One of the men quickly stepped back and forwards again, agitated, as if he’d just seen a card trick he couldn’t believe.
“What?” continued Guy. “Am I supposed to act all surprised. Well, that’s what I’m here for.”
“What the fuck, man? This dude’s mental.” The shorter man mumbled. “Watch it, he’s probably tooled up.”
“No, I’m not ‘tooled up’. So can we just get on with it?” Guy mumbled back to the two men, mocking them.
‘Mate, are you for real?” said the big man.
“Never been more real. I’m here to die. And you’re going to do it or me.”
“Fuck off.” said the shorter man.
“Mate, if you’re that keen on dying,” said the big man, “why don’t you just go home and get stuck into your bathroom cabinet. Just give me your phone and wallet first.”
“Because if you do it, I also get to do society a good deed by removing from it scumbags, who might otherwise be doing this to some innocent person and potentially ruining a happy family with your selfishness. Think of me as supersized entrapment. So come on. Fuckstick, shut your big talk and get on with it. The sooner you kill me, the sooner society can start relishing its last few days of your dubious company, before you get locked up for ever. And get anally raped every night for the rest of your worthless lives.”
Now Guy was sure they were frowning, as the shorter one was nodding his head backwards, indicating to the other that he’d prefer to leave now.
“And just so there are no misunderstandings,” Guy whispered, “I will be putting up a motherfucker of a fight, so you will have to kill me. Come on, then. When you’re ready.”
“Man, why are you whispering?”
“Because, Einstein, I don’t want anyone interrupting us. It’s taken me ages to sort this out.”
“Mate, we could just do you now. And say you started it. And we’d be home free.”
“Ha.” Guy smirked, genuinely amused. “Well at least you have a good sense of humour. I imagine this isn’t your first offence. Damn, it’s a pity I won’t be in the courtroom. You’ll be standing handcuffed in the dock, looking at 25 to life, with your families sobbing their hearts out, and your barrister says, ‘And the victim told the defendants that he’d walked over to their suburb that night to cajole them into killing him in order to ruin their lives’. The whole court room will piss themselves. Get real, you dickhead.”
The men flexed their arms and rolled their heads on their necks, preparing. All it had taken was a simple word like ‘dickhead’ to create the desired response.
“So what’s it feel like to be the victim for once? Come on. Stabby stabby.”
The bigger man reached into his pocket, but the other nervously shuffled his feet and took a backwards step, distancing himself or getting ready to bolt. Guy glared at them, ready for the fight of his life to ensure his death. But the man took his hand out of his pocket, holding nothing. If Guy hadn’t put in so much effort into engineering this situation, and if it wasn’t so important for him to be here in the first place, he might have just walked away, bored. But then again, it was interesting to watch these two; to be privy to the decision-making process in the shallow end of the gene pool. If these lumpen dullards were anything to go by, it was astonishing that society worked at all.
Guy sighed to himself. He knew this scenario was now just far too complicated for these two to fathom. He could almost hear their brains short-circuiting. The shoe was now firmly on the other foot and kicking them up the arse. It obviously wasn’t much fun being a victim.
From the street corner, behind the two men, a large, dark coloured Ford sedan quietly prowled into the street. With no headlights cutting the night, Guy’s heart quickened with hope– perhaps the car contained these two morons’ cohorts or even their bosses. These two would need to save face and do the deed, which Guy was so intent on having done. But as the car turned into the street, its full beam headlights lit up the entire world and spotlit the crowd of three; from the car’s radiator grille, blue and red lights filled the street, running in a huge merry-go-round across the fronts of the surrounding houses.
“Oh shit.” said Guy and the two men in unison.
The car stopped, and two uniformed cops jumped out and headed directly for the group.
“Don’t you blokes move a bloody muscle.” said the cop from the car’s passenger side brandishing a weapon.
The driver called into his radio.
“Unit seventy two. We have three men in Cowper Street. Repeat, three men. Possible assault in progress. One more unit required to assist. Over.”
The two men standing in front of Guy turned to show the cops open palms, protesting their innocence and one pointed at Guy, but the cop responded by aiming a Tazer squarely at the big man.
“Move one more muscle, sunshine. And I’ll move them all for you. And you won’t be happy.”
“Unit fifty en route. ETA One minute. Over.” A female voice replied over the radio.
From what sounded like only a few roads away, a police siren wailed into the night sky.
“Copy that. Out.” said the driver walking towards the two men. “Now Danno. Tommy boy. Nice night for a stroll? So who have you chosen as tonight’s lucky contestant?”
With the two would-be muggers positioned between him and the cops, Guy snatched his wallet and phone from his pockets, and, with them clearly in his hands above his head, he backed away from the two men and headed towards the police, now in the role of relieved, potential victim. Shit. He couldn’t even commit suicide properly.
Originally from England, JON KENYON has been living in Australia for the last sixteen years. For many years, he was a copywriter and Creative Director in London and Sydney advertising agencies and radio stations. He has written plays, screenplays and novels, and he has been published in the UK and Australia. He blogs at www.soisitjustmeorwhat.blogspot.com
