longest day

Everything different. Everything the same. Room minging of dampness. His bed and mine. I was convalescing after some long illness. I couldn’t remember what it was, but I’d never felt fitter. Never felt better.  Curtains closed. Creaky wardrobe. Linoleum on the floor with a red castle pattern scuffed to China, or wherever was beneath the floorboards and all the way down there.

            ‘Fuck Charlie, I never thought I’d see you again.’

            ‘Aye,’ he said, in his piping childish voice. Still wearing that large Parka, dog-eared fur framing his wee face, squinting up at me.  ‘That’s the way life works sometimes. Nobody belongs here any mair.’

            I jumped out of bed. Stripe-blue pyjamas kept in some body heat but I forgot how cold the old house was and my feet were a hop, skip and jump away from chittering frost bite. I’d have taken Charlie’s winter coat off him but he was only up to my elbow and his tan monkey-boots were child sized. He looked up at me with that mongo expression again and I felt like slapping him. I expected him to be more respectful. Chubby wee face shrivelled up like a berry and him backing away, but he stood his ground.

            ‘Fuck Charlie, I thought I wiz deid.’

            ‘You ur.’

            I went to give him a quick whack across the heid for his own good, to teach him a lesson, but my arm froze.

            ‘Whit happened Charlie?’

            ‘You died. That’s whit happened,’ he said.

            ‘But I cannae move my arm.’

            ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘You cannae hurt anybody here but yourself.’

            ‘Whit dae yeh mean?’

            ‘Just whit I said.’

            I bumped past him, sick of his double-talk and trickery. He stumbled a bit, which in a way was reassuring.  In my game you don’t talk to the monkey, you talk to the monkey grinder. But when I pulled on the bedroom door it was locked. The handle didn’t rattle, or the door stick. I just got a sense that it had a mind of its own and it wasn’t for opening until it was ready. But I wasn’t sure how I knew this.

            I turned on Charlie. ‘You better let me out of here. I’m warning yeh.’

            ‘You’ll get oot soon enough. When you’re ready.’  

            ‘Whit dae yeh mean when I’m ready.’

            ‘You’ve had a long rest,’ he said. ‘That’s took all the badness from your corporal body.’

            ‘Whit am I wearing now Scottish mist. Nobody ever listened to a word you said. You always did talk shite Charlie. Just let me out of here and we’ll say no mair.’  

            ‘You can leave anytime.’

            ‘Right.’ I tried the door again. It was locked. ‘Where’s the key smartarse?’

            ‘You’re the key.’ He tilted his head to look up at me.

            My arm froze as I went to hit him a crack.

            ‘You’re just hurting yourself.’

            He didn’t gloat about it. Just went and sat on the bed. I wasn’t really sure what to do. I sat on the other bed, facing him.

            ‘Am I deid, right enough Charlie?’ I’d a lump in my throat and felt like greeting.

            ‘Aye you’re deid right enough. And the quicker you get used to the idea the quicker you can get on with your work.’

            ‘Whit work? I’m a plumber, up to my knees in shite all day. No’ an angel.’

            Charlie smiled at that. ‘That’s true. I’ve got a few friends in that sphere and none of them I can assure you are anything like you.’

            He pulled his hood down and his hair was golden and his face an orb that shone so brightly I cowered down in the gap between the beds and held my hands up to block the light. When he pulled his hood back up I could look at him again. I stood near the wardrobe, ready to jump inside and burrow under the old coats we used to keep for blankets.  

            ‘I’m sorry Charlie, for all those things I did. I was only wee. I didnae really mean any harm. Whit happened to you. All those wee things. Accidents. Could have happened to anyone.’

            I sneaked a look up at him, but all I could see was the side of his Parka hood. But I thought I’d did a pretty good job of convincing him. After all, he might have been getting a bit snooty with me, with all that angel stuff, but we were family. And blood trumped feathers in anybody’s book.

            ‘I’m no’ judgin’ you,’ he said.

            I didn’t say anything because if I did I was pretty much fucked.

            ‘That’s no’ the way we work around here.’

            ‘I’m glad to hear it Charlie. Let bygones be bygones. Spilt milk and all that.’

            ‘No it’s not that simple. You judge yourself. Simple really. Any hurt you’ve intentionally caused you feel it, you live it, you suffer.’

            A stabbing pain in my eye bowled me over and the cartilage crunched against bone. Forehead staccato and print of painted-over wallpaper.  Worse was the terror that I was going to be hit again and again. A brute stood above me ready to slap and punch and kick. ‘Please stop!’ I found myself saying in Charlie’s feeble voice. Snot ran down my nose. The brute waited and slapped me so hard I blacked out. 

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