The Streets at Night

The streets are cold at night and yet not cold at all. At least not in the way that it is cold in winter, when you begin to lose feeling in your hands and toes, and the slightest breeze sends a shiver through every pricked hair on every pale inch of white frosted skin. No, this is a different kind of cold, a cold which makes you feel strangely hot, that causes your limbs to become agitated, coiled like a warm spring against a bitter frost that stares at you with a thousand unyielding eyes. It is a cold that has forgotten pain and love and a thousand other rosy red dreams, or rather it is a cold that has grown cynical with the remembrance of them, and in the stark emptiness of the darkened night time the life of day is swallowed whole without remorse. It is a strange and sinister cold that regards you hungrily, a cold that fixes you with a stare and dares you to bite.

As I tread carefully amongst the broken glass of yesterday it fills everything, the murmur of the trees, the harsh neon glow of the street light, the sudden screech of passing cars fading into the distance. I can feel its eyes upon me in the curve of the road, the distant sound of far off voices, the rows of too tall buildings that are so far away but at the same time seem to be on top of me, pressing into me against the blackness of the night. I venture a whistle into the darkness and can feel my shoulders tense up, the sound somehow more ominous than the silence that, broken by the occasional car headlight or spray of distant laughter, lingered previously in the still and ghostly air. I can feel my eyes becoming furtive almost against my will, darting in and out of darkened corners as my feet press onwards. Straight ahead a set of lonely traffic lights flash a dull streak of red, warning me that it is not safe to cross, that I must turn back, but now is the night time where different rules apply, where the lights can do nothing but watch, and so I cross to the other side and turn right past a ditch filled with empty cans, into a barely lit corridor where up ahead the muted tones of an empty playground punctuate the distance.

The walkway feels narrow, threatening, despite the wide grassy area that follows me to the left, and, without realising what I’m doing at first, I allow the sharp metal of my house key to slide in between the middle fingers of my left hand, now curled into a loose fist. The air feels colder still as the night seems to taunt me, the street lights seeming to bear their long grinning teeth directly at me, and somewhere a vague whisper gathers at my ear. I tell myself I am ready for whatever the night has planned for me as my eyes grow hard and fix into the distance at the sound of footsteps. At the sight of a man approaching slowly from the opposite end of the walkway my fingers wrap tightly around the jagged key in my left hand, letting the metal edge bite ever so slightly into the soft flesh at the base of my knuckle.

The gesture strikes me as ridiculous at first, because I know that the man approaching me is probably completely harmless, more than likely just another late night pedestrian like me anxious to reach the familiar warmth of home. But the dark streets are a mean and unforgiving place, especially on a night like this, and as the figure draws nearer, the vague outline of his features becoming more prominent, I begin to ready myself for any eventuality. I feel taller somehow, and realise it is because every muscle of my upper body has tightened up in anticipation. On a night like this you have to be ready, because the night is cold for a reason. It wants to swallow you, devour you, break you into pieces, and if you let it, if you are not prepared, it is going to come for you. I glare at him now, this distant stranger, a strong and confident glare, letting him know that I won’t just roll over and let him steal my wallet or my mobile phone or whatever else he thinks he can take from me. He is close now, so close, as the shimmer of a street light falls across his cold face. The crunch of his boots becomes like the ticking of a slow clock, and with every beat my fist winds tighter. I can hear him now, the whisper of his breath in my face as he pulls alongside me. He will wish he had walked on by, just kept his head down and on to the next victim. Not me, I won’t let it happen to me.

And as his face half turns towards me I drive the edge of my house key into his cheek, swinging my fist violently into the other side of his face before he has the opportunity to turn back round, sending him sprawling to the ground. I drive my foot into his stomach but that is not nearly enough for someone like him, and with the other foot I stamp down hard on his head, which shines in the glare of the street light. He tries to hold his arms up to protect himself but I kick them away and drive my boot into his face, once, twice, several times. He thinks he can rob me does he? Steal my things? I bend down over him and reach into his coat pocket, pulling out a few screwed up notes and a shiny white mobile phone. How do you like that, how does it feel when someone else steals your things you worthless piece of shit? I stand back up and kick him once again in the chest even though he is not moving, and consider stamping his head again before realising that it is already a bloody mess, pools of congealing blood running into the grass verge, and still I do it anyway, because he deserves it, because he is worthless.

I go to his wallet which has spilled out onto the path and open it up. And inside is a photo, a man and a child, a little girl, a father playing in a park with his daughter, and I look back at the still body and I can see, even though his face is a barely recognisable chaos of blood and skin and bone, I can see it is him, the man in the photo, the father. A cold breeze floats around my head and pierces my brain as all anger suddenly drains from my body. I go to the man and lean over him, hold him, try to drag him up, but he is lifeless in my arms. And I cry, gentle tears at first but then rivers, lost in the darkness of the night as I hold onto him, and I am numb, and I am shivering, and somewhere in the distance there is laughter, and the moon is large in the empty night sky.