Chapter 1 - Stopping the Rot
It was easy to see, and feel, the bleak decay of poverty and low expectations.
He sat, staring, at the passing garbage. The river, only forty yards away, always visible from his default well-worn chair. The debris of his youth in his eyes mirrored by the debris from his hometown really, floated mindlessly by, giving the river a sense of poverty. His top floor council flat offered the ideal viewing platform to see the daily decay he felt in his gut. The river, pushing onwards into the estuary, with its relentless collection of garbage confirmed his own bleak thoughts.
Today, a small surprise, a shopping trolley. They normally sink as soon as the spirited youth, or the lost drunk, pushed them into the river. You could often see the trolley collection, when the river ran low, only half a mile from his flat in the Chapel Hole. He caught that thought, Chapel Hole, and he remembered the stories told during his days as an alter boy in the nearby Chapel. The sinners went there when they had had enough. The black, deep, bend in the river the perfect supporting act for the stories of sin. This trolley though, was fighting to stay afloat, snagged on a large broken branch. The stream of thoughts broken by the irritating clip coming from the endless sequence of YouTube clips.
Pushing the remote, the clip flicked to the next one, he smiled as the TV settled into a less irritating conflagration of stuff. One irritant gone his mind drifted back to the trolley - he smiled at it's wilful avoidance of its fate at the bottom of the river. It passed, the trolley almost like the centre piece, bottles, plastic bags, a trainer, it's adornments. Decay was not far away. It was right in front of his eyes - every single day.
It had him, this decay, and he knew it. Four decades he had fought to escape this place. An angry Scottish teenager, scorned for his scholarship attendance at a private school, one of many angry young lost souls in the Big Smoke. Alone, but powered by anger, he had not hesitated to board the train for London - determined to do whatever was needed to escape from the life he had known. Escape from the white lips of anger, escape from the threat and the beatings, escape from newspaper for toilet paper, escape from hopelessness, escape to matter, escape to make a difference. To change the fucking world. Escape the place - he blamed for his life. Not knowing, in his angry youth, that he was taking himself with him - tarnished and warped by the batterings and the bruises, visible and emotional.
The decades passed quickly enough.
He flicked another reel - his mind briefly focusing on the Godfather clip. He could see the passion for life in the eyes of Al Pacino and the decay of life in Marlon Brando. They seemed to connect with his memory of his angry youth and his current failed, and failing, state. His eyes flicking back to the passing river. A flicker of regret in his eyes as he realised the trolley had passed. Why he had wanted to watch the trolley disappear rather than be surprised by its absence he pondered briefly. Pushing his finger into the well-worn remote and another movie reel came on.
His Father, funeral yesterday, would have taken some joy in his decay. The low-level jealousy of his success had always been there. Even as his success faded, three decades of anger eventually taking its toll on his mind and body, he felt the glee in his father's words.
"You belong here." He had said it simply enough.
It was the look in his eyes though. The look that said, 'who did you think you were'. It punched him then, and it punched him now, it's truth adding weight to the emotional gut punch. He had got above his station - and people just did not like that. His Father least of all. The river, it's jetsam sometimes a good distraction from his thoughts. YouTube with its easy dopamine pleasing scenes his main diet of pain relief.
His buzzing phone pushed away the ruminating avoidance. Looking down it was her, again. She had been a bad idea then, when he fought his demons. She was a worse idea now, that his demons had won, and his life had contracted back to the poverty of his childhood. He let it ring out. He did not feel like he had the energy for other humans. He wanted solitude, safety, from the threats of others. He needed isolation. Watching his brother give the eulogy at his father's funeral, when he knew it was expected of him. The drunken chats of the wake flaked with 'what happened to you'. All combined to suffocate what limited ability he had, these days, to engage in life or with people.
Her text followed. She had always been persistent. As always, she did not disappoint, her direct approach and lack of compassion he had once found addictive. No longer, she was part of that stage of his life, when addiction and demons won. He needed his wounds to heal now. He had no fight left. No falseness to soothe her need for attention and companionship.
"Your Dad's funeral was yesterday. You will be hungover and feeling sorry for yourself. You hated him so you get no sympathy from me. You were just never brave enough to tell him how much of a shit he was - and now even that chance has gone. You can wallow in your pathetic stupor but I warn you it will piss me off! Now answer your fucking phone. I will call back in thirty minutes - go get showered!".
He read. He re-read.
He did not want to but his addiction, as ever, reminded him of her power over him. His arousal, sitting soft and wrinkled in his grey unwashed pubic hair, pushed alive his needs. If his cock could speak he knew what it would say. His cock had the same critical, demanding, cold voice of his Father.
Not wanting to hear the thoughts of his cock - he got up and headed to the shower. As instructed.
