Lighthouses 1

[At 3am on a Saturday night I'm walking home through a snare-drum beat of rain, speed-tripping through brewing puddles when a mangy shape creeps from a collage of hedge and rain-curtain. A satanic hell-hound dreich and bloody-eyed, rank hair pasted to its scalp. It's just a fox. I run the rest of the way, spooked.

Later, when I stop smoking, I try to start running properly. I run at 4am in the small park near my flat, so no-one can see me staggering about and hacking up. I listen to Green Day and REM and wonder why I still listen to the same music, and the fox pads out of murky nothingness and sits and watches me. It watches me run up and down the same path for half an hour and when I turn onto the street to leave I see it pick itself up and disappear back into the shadows. It does this for six months.

I tell a friend about the fox and they tell me seeing a fox is a sign of finding your way, but also that there are loads of these types of things, animal totems and symbolisms. I'll take it, though, I think. Just for now.

Two years later I'm starting a new job, just part-time but it's okay, it's alright. Six months in and there are days when it's doing my head in and on one of those days I'm sitting on the bus on my way to start a shift, huffing and thinking about how I should have studied more, or at all, or not have screwed up ten years of my life and I try to focus on Philip Larkin in my lap and the lines blur and regather and suddenly he says 'each dull day and each despairing act/builds up the crags from which the spirit leaps' and I take it.

Another year has passed and I've started smoking again at work, I've forgotten about my 4am runs and my furry audience and the years of being unemployed and recovering and staring at walls and now things are different, good in some ways and bad in others and as I puff out the window in the midnight air two young fox cubs come skittling down the street below and I let them become a part of me -]

13/10/18

Kevin slumped down to the foot of the wall, stretching his shaking legs out and wiping a greasy palm across his forehead. Microscopic dots flitted across his vision as he gazed at the bulb, dangling pendulum-like and describing a slow circle in the air.

Slower now, mirroring the men's breath as they fidgeted, huffed and regained their composure.

'How long are you planning on sitting there anyway?' Doug rustled in his bonds, twisting his head to peer through a bloated black eye. 'You've done a shit job here. These are crap knots.'

'A day,' muttered Kevin, 'a whole day.' 

'And then what?' Spittle-flecks of blood noosed from the corner of Doug's mouth as he angled his face up again from the carpet. 'A week? A year? You do see the problem here?'

Kevin looked up at the still bulb. Its glow was slim now and they lay in their pickled arrangement, he propped up against the far wall, Doug face down on the carpet within a hub of blocky shadows as dusk settled. 'I kind of do,' he said, choking on the words.

'Look, man, I - ' Doug wriggled on the floor before desisting in defeat. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry that you've had all this, but you can't... you can't will everything to be as it was.'

Kevin picked at his raw knuckle. 'You said there was five more?'

'Yeah, but even then, like, what would you be doing? Scraping moments, hours?'

'That will be fine. If that's all there is, that's fine.' 

Suddenly tired, Kevin picked himself up and staggered out the room. 'I'm sorry,' he shouted back, as the dark of the hall wrapped around him.

*

12/10/18

Windows were boarded up and a heavy silence coated the building and the street beyond. Kevin checked the address and pressed the buzzer. He pushed at the droning response and slipped into the stairwell, balancing the pizza as he wedged his phone back into his pocket. Ahead a shard of light punctured the musty corridor and, dodging the sudden ghost of a bicycle and two festering bin bags, he ventured towards it.

'Hawaiian,' he announced uncertainly, '16 inch?'

'That's me.' An exhausted-looking face shrouded in a fuzzy beard peeked out the gap. Rustling, the man produced a wad of notes and received his pizza on the flat of his left arm. Kevin noticed the right one hanging limp in a cast. 'Cheers. Cheers, pal. Listen - you couldn't do me a quick favour while you're here could you? I've fired a wee bit extra in there - it's just I need to lift this box, that's all, and - '

He raised the injured limb in explanation. 'If you've got ten seconds, like...'

'Sure, no worries.' Kevin followed him into the sparse hall. Up ahead, the man dropped the pizza box onto a chair in a tiny living room to the left - the only item of furniture there, proud and central - and ushered Kevin into a small, brightly-lit back room. He had to duck to enter. There was nothing in the room other than a sturdy-looking steel box, nestled in the corner against a yellow-stained wall. In the centre of the ceiling, a naked light bulb skipped and rattled, buzzing frenetic bursts of sheer white. Kevin toyed with the phone in his pocket, an edginess nibbling at him.

'What's up with that?' He said, nodding towards the bulb.

'Uh-huh,' said the bearded man. His eyes were darkly underscored and needled with tiny red lines. 'Exactly. Look, if you wouldn't mind - would you just stick that box over it for a few seconds? Just until it calms down.'

Kevin looked at the steel box. 'Eh?'

'I know, I know - art project. I'd really appreciate it.' The tired man nudged forward and stood looking forlornly at the dancing bulb. Kevin was struck by a sudden impatience at the farce of it all. He swung the box up and held it underneath the bulb. For a fractured second he thought he felt it rattling harder, as if in defence, and the box grew warm in his hands. A sudden, spiked vision of Keira stung the back of his eyes and he realised his hands were very hot.

'The fuck - ' the box clattered as he dropped it. They were suddenly standing in a dim room, the bulb hanging limp and lifeless and emitting the dullest glow. Spidery shadows crept away from it across the ceiling.

'Thank you! Thanks so much, that's perfect.' The bearded man grasped his hand. 'I'm Doug, by the way. Your hand okay?'

'Yeah... yeah. I'm Kevin.' Kevin extracted his hand and rubbed at the residue of warmth. 'What was - what's it hooked up to?'

'Ach, it's just an art project,' Doug repeated. Kevin stared at him, but nothing more was forthcoming. 

'Why don't you turn it off when it's - when it's like that?'

'I can't,' said Doug, proferring a further handful of notes.

*

It was two am by the time Kevin trudged into his flat. He bypassed the bedroom he had avoided for six months and flung his delivery bag down on the duvet on the sofa. Stepping into the kitchen, he flipped the light and froze. Keira stood in the corner, her head twisted at an awkward angle. Fingers of blood wormed from a deep gash in her scalp. He padded forward; her mouth opened and closed fish-like, and she was gone.

Kevin blinked. He paced up and patted the walls around where she had stood. He slid to his knees and ran his fingers over the cupboard doors under the sink. He crouched to paw at the floor. He flapped his digits through open space and the will to forget imploded and a whip-fast spool of pictures unfolded and brought with it heat and bloom and the crush of her chest pushed into his back as he slept and the taste of her neck as he pressed his face into it to say bye and have a good day at work and I'll have dinner ready for when you get home you are always home at twenty past five - 

Later, in webs of flickering tv light, Kevin burrowed into his duvet and wondered at what the mind could do to people who'd lost someone. He dreamt of jittering light bulbs and steel boxes and gaunt men staring expectantly.

*

13/10/18

'Oh,' mouthed Doug.

'Yeah,' grinned Kevin, and mooched side to side in the hall. 'You've won a complimentary pizza. Just gets thrown up randomly, your details, like. Happy days, huh?'

'Oh... kay.' Doug glanced at the sodden bin bags further down, and back at Kevin. 'Er, thanks. Cheers.'

Kevin lumped it into his uninjured hand and pushed forward. 'How's the wee project? Needing any help with that box thing?'

Doug shuffled to one side and frowned as Kevin stepped into the hall. The lights were off, and they both peered towards the faint glow sifting from the room at the far end. 'No... no, that's alright mate. Listen, thanks for the pizza and everything, but I'll let you get on, I've - '

'What's the idea behind it? Are you part of a collective, or is it a personal piece?' Kevin slipped down the hall as he spoke, ducking his head into the small room and taking in the light bulb. It hung limp and accusing.

'Look,' Doug strode up and placed his arm under Kevin's neck and across the gap of the doorway, a weedy protective barrier. 'I appreciate your interest and all, and I'm grateful to you for helping me. But I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You can't just walk in here.'

They stood statuesque in the thin wash of light.

'Fine,' said Kevin. 'I'm sorry, I'm just - I was awfully intrigued. Sorry to interrupt you.'

He felt charged as he retreated down the dark hallway, Doug a hued shadow thrown up amongst black.

*

Keira was lying foetus-like on the floor when Kevin rushed into the flat. She raised her head and examined him with glassy tadpole eyes and Kevin was beside her in a beat, smearing blood-dried hair away from her forehead. She mouthed croaked splutters amidst webs of drool and the sharp cut of six months ago was time clipped and rethreaded amongst time. Hacking a hawk of red spatter against his shirt, she shivered and was gone.

He knelt in a cast of lambent dusk-light, arms raised around starchy nothingness as rain thrummed the window. He pushed welling thoughts against each other as they pinched at him until they regressed into a putrid flurry, tripping: I don't want fish again tonight, I'll call, don't do nothing again today, love you/ is this Mr. Adams/ there's been an accident/ hit-and-run / 

He stumbled up and out of the flat.

*