And I’ve placed a bet on my team to win, 6 to 1 for a victory that could see me flush for the first time. “If there’s one team that’ll bring it home it’s United” I say to myself out loud as the people at the bus stop text into phones with such ferocity that their fingers may amputate themselves, and a man thrusts his way through a newspaper with such concentrated fervour – he is cold and downtrodden in his corduroy coat, he has the aroma of home cooking dancing around his nose – well, he has got her trained well after all. Not for a second does he appreciate me interrupting him with enquiries after the time; his gaze falls down his nose onto me in an avalanche of disdain.
“Get lost you heathen. You vagabond!” I stumble back from his harsh words that tear through my fragile shroud but I won’t let such a vile and repugnant individual discolour the sunshine of my mood. Even though these other people are now turning heads with a tumour strain, their robotic fingers paused over the keypads of efflorescent phones. I kick up a bit of a stink then,
accusing all and sundry of conspiracy to grave prejudice and try to express how they shall repent when stood in the dock. My elevated words cause many to count the specks on their shoes, never before have the structural details of the kerb held such a profane allure as when a stranger does start to holler and yell with such provocative theatre. One woman begins searching inside her handbag, inflated with a Prada grandeur, as if undergoing particularly taxing open-bag surgery, or searching for her children – or someone else’s for that matter. You never can tell these days – women get as much perverse shits and giggles from the fiddling with little ones. Only the other day one such sexual deviant was tracked down to a dishevelled bedsit whereupon the braying mob did stamp and growl with knives between teeth and flaming torches thrust aloft.
I’m shooting bullets with my eyes at her now, refusing to move away as she continues to thrash around her bag, almost trying to climb inside it so that a shield will be cast between us. “Move along you fiend” pipes up another man stood leisurely and aloof against a lamppost as if cemented there in a frozen faggot pose. All these fags, touting for cocks on every street corner as if hailing a cab. He appears shocked when I round on him, showering him with vitriol in the most litigious way, but he only really begins to get distressed when I start stroking and petting his arm in a truly provocative manner as one would a wounded animal, albeit with a sly grin kept hidden from view. Despite me haranguing this poor young queer dressed like a drainpipe, those around us have shrunk into stone, their faces shrivelled away into their fat rubbery necks – they seek no trouble here.
Blowing kisses and spreading illegible words of wisdom I stride forth from the party as the people begin to rave and dance with relief as the 63 bus lumbers into the stop. On and on I strike out along, fall against benches warning against ‘Wet Paint’, pause to stare in at a gourmet slop house where rotund beasts spoon haute offal into their open-mouth orifices; the food being rendered cold within an instant from the frosty atmosphere that hangs between each and every
one of them. All cannot wait to get the fuck out and vomit boasts over their friends about how delectable the whole experience was. Step on the cracks and have a heart attack my old man used to stay as I heeded his warning to scale the railings, nostalgia biting like bile as I recall my little hand in his big man-hand that he would turn to his trade and raise to make mother quiet. Graceful young things all flowered and ripe skip along on their way, socks high and skirts hitched, pretty plaits of hair. But I walk on by - they are but children I tell myself with frozen water sympathy. And the drooling mob do perch like vultures upon every set of traffic lights after all.
And I’m almost home, just one more city, one more lifetime to go. I pass an old crone squatting in a doorway, the very epitome of scum, an unhealthy residue that stains the street with limpet resilience. Her damp pillow of cardboard reads ‘Please’ and that is all, as she reaches up to me, clawing at my tail with her scabbed hands full of banknotes, just simply crying ‘Please’. I hold her gaze for a second but turn and flee with her rotting features a spume on my mind, that leaves me wondering for a long long time...were the odds I was given sufficient??
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