Part 4

He took his chips to the window seat.
His fingers sank into the damp sweaty package.
He couldn't erase the memory of that cocky cunt pissing on his chips.
He felt like tossing them in protest but nobody would understand the protest unless he explained it but then, they wouldn't understand that either.

It was a Saturday afternoon.
Town was lethargic.
Shifts had changed and the organised morning shoppers had all returned home, tired and weary, to their semi's and detached lives to use the drill or washing machine or whatever they bought guaranteed before they sat, fragged from the early starts and work throughout to sleep ready for the next frantic day. Early start. Can't waste the day.
Who judges waste?

K-Boy had spent the largest portion of the day lounging in bed.
He wasn't always sleeping just as he wasn't always awake. What he was always without fail doing was resting; which was something he needed to do more than work=stress=fatigue=flake out.
He was keeping himself alive which was the main thing.

* He is at this point keeping himself alive in the Merry Fish Fellow. The protest was about the lad behind the counter. It wasn't his fault, in fact he did nothing but what K-Boy had asked of him, he didn't even short change. K-Boy had simply focused on the action of him pouring vinegar over his chips and seen only this punk of a kid slashing over his lovely chunks of potato. It disturbed him. It still does. *

K-Boy was a fully paid up member of the late shift.
Late sleepers and bored kids wandering about pubs, watching big screen games and making arses of themselves far too soon. He was meeting the Big Man in The Crown at quarter to. Opposite, Mr Minute watch repairs displayed a clock in their window. K-Boy displayed no wristwatch so he had memorised the locations of all the clocks in town, hence the location of his dinner.
He was never lost for time. Sometimes he felt he had too much or too little but he was never lost for it.
He supposed that would change when he died.

Mr Minute was situated on the cross junction made by the meeting of Argyle street and the tail end of the A-something or other that speared the town. Traffic lights stood on it's doorstep. The other side of the lights the gnarling one way system lurked. It was a busy corner. Occassionally a bus would block his view of the clock (then he was lost). The clock was the luminous digital kind. It looked like it had been bought third or even fourth hand. Below it hung a sign declaring;

'All Sale Prices'

Next to Mr Minute was an alleyway. There were a lot of alleys secreted around the town, criss-crossing clandestine places. K-Boy enjoyed walking them. They made him think of the underbelly and innerworkings of life and that he had finished with the girl he had once fucked in one; semi-naked in full on rain. Nico was into that. K-Boy was male, no need to ask. Bare naked fucking stripped of all cordiality. Cowper's Gland sex. Right to the mucky business.

Pissing vinegar.
K-boy could hear the cocky cunt's bragging conversation.
Some girl was caught in his attraction.
Sticky amber and a tasty morsel.
Young girls are easily pleased. Some get older and wise up. Some don't.
She giggled a lot.
K-Boy fitted his earphones and left before the cunt analised her in the batter mix.
He crossed at the lights and headed down Argyle street then onto St Peter's walk and into The Crown.
He was early but the Big Man was already there. K-Boy carried two frothing pints over and sat opposite.
The Big Man was sat in a corner, snug in his own vast opulance. He took the pint up in his huge hand and made the glass seem a children's toy.

"Drink up Gayboy," he said as he tipped the pint whole down his gullet. He smacked his fat lips and his eyes glistened with enough moisture to water the Sahara for a year.

"What's the rush? I just got here."

"Lt's bringing some Afghan round."

Afghan Hound. K-Boy drained his pint in two. "Where to?"

The Big Man stood and the pub interior behind him disappeared. "Your place. Let's go."

Part 3

Friday came like so much pent up ejaculation.
Over so quickly, before it had even properly arrived.
A week of frustration wanked off in so many seconds.
Hours of reality transmuted into fractured moments.
Faces blurred.
Actions forgotten or not even realised.
Was I even there at all?

K-Boy realised he had to stop tripping so heavily.
The fall was beginning to graze his fragile mind.

Saturday morning and nothing but his bank balance, liver functions and brain cells had altered.
He rolled over in his sack and gradually drifted away.
Away from reality, again.

Part 2

Smoke drifted lazily from his mouth.
The television was discussing genius in a dry tone that suggested it had never been close.
He rested his cigarrette in the eye of his ashtray and considered a fresh roll.
His mind was beginning to move; or at least to convey the appearance of movement and to gravitate.

The cathode shone brightly in his darkened room.
A candle in a beer bottle guttered in the slight breeze from his half open window.
His head fell back into the warmth of his chair and he felt like he was in some fanciful storybook about French houses and ecstatic love affairs that didn't get fucked up because he'd tried to get his fingers in her knickers too soon.

The evening had worked out well.
He had expected the arrival of the Big Man but it hadn't happened.
K-Boy was wearing his hat anyway so it didn't matter much. He was getting nicely greased taking the scenic route so he wasn't too bothered about anything at this point.
He was happy in his bare lounge with his TV and stereo all accessible from his armchair, footrest and shoes off.
He wasn't bothered about company.

Two days previously, in a fit of an urge, he had moved all unnessential items out of the lounge. This included sofa, sideboard, bookcase and excluded television, stereo, armchair. He liked the space he had given himself. The bareness of the walls gave way to freedom of mind and when he sat in the middle of all this bareness he could feel his head begin to slow from the rushed day he had endured. The noise and haste melted and he could think. His head, his mind, felt quiet, at ease and at peace like a vaulted library after closing. Only then could he sort calmly through the shit of the day. The shit he had to deal with and the shit he could forget.

K-Boy's evening was developing nicely.

He thought about advertising. He thought;

1. About how much shit they talk.
2. About the ludicrous nature of slogans.
3. About ice lollies that can cool minds.
4. About bottled water that can cleanse souls.
5. About how the soul was never meant to be cleansed: it was meant to catch all the shit and keep it there.
6. About how his soul felt like a filthy net that'd been under far too long, grime slick and laden with all his own shit to torment him with.
7. He wondered if that was why it hurt so much sometimes and if that was why he let it. Because he believed it was that way.

The conclusion was typical of K-Boy. He was a naturally miserable kind of character he had to admit it. Ask Nico. Ask her about his moods. He was often disatisfied with life and life was often disatisfied with him.

He peeled himself from the chair and shuffled to the window. The pane was cracked in one corner. Single pane. Singular pain. Cold as ice. He pressed his forehead into the glass and imagined it shattering into a thousand lethal pieces at once transformed into tiny pieces of himself raining onto the street below. Glittering broken jewels.
He wondered how it might feel to explode, how it might feel in that split tenth of a second before he became nothing but vapour. It would be an unfortunate moment to realise he had made a mistake.

The window sill was damp beneath his palms. The white paint cracked. His fingertips brushed the flaking emulsion to one side. He noticed a small line of graffitti which read;

' The glory of love? '

It unsettled him so he rearranged and added letters until it said;

' The glory of Voles? '

He felt far more at ease with the abstract.

Yeah, his evening had worked out well.

Part 1

It started with a kiss.

That was K-Boy and Nico two years previous to the start of this particular series of events.

They have now split up but back then they were just getting going.

It was largely a sex thing all along. K-Boy would often wander into the fanciful realm of unrequited love but Nico always yanked him back from the brink. Out of the two of them she was the one with an idea of what was truly happening between them.

They eventually split over a number of minor and some major differences. Strangely it was the minor splits that bothered K-Boy most but hey, takes different strokes as Arnold says.

One of the major differences was that they were the two opposing sides of the argument.

Again, strangely enough, six months after the break up (that brings us to here, now) released from the bullshit of having to be a couple and all that is expected of that, they find each other's company relaxed if tender in areas.

They still want each other.
K-Boy is sure of it.
He won't chance his arm though.
Once bitten so to speak.
That happened two months previously, which is also four months after.

Nico was starting to come around. K-Boy took his own lead on his own thoughts; feeling sure, feeling her feeling she wanted him. Not back. Not for another bout in the heavy weight ring of together forever but for one night. Pay per view. Come back gig of the Millenium. Fuck of the Century.

Nico could be very abrasive when she felt the need. Ten stone of slobbering, stoned K-Boy slouching across the sofa at her, trying his best to keep it together but losing more ground than he could gain, meant she felt the need. He felt her knee.

This is not their story. It is not mine and it is not yours. It's a story about a prize in the greatest competition ever run. Both Nico and K-boy are running for this prize which is why they are relevant and here now. Neither know they are running. None of us know we are running until we finally stop and look around. Nobody knows what the prize is and the competition is more of a game.

This could all end tomorrow.