B - Poisoning Your Zafu

"Got the time on ya, cock?"

The bus station smells like the sweaty innards of a bin, like the smell
when you empty an ashtray and some of the ash goes up your nose.
There's a fucking clock on the fucking wall just round the fucking
corner, and I want to tell him that but I don't. He's waiting for me to
answer, so I lower my hands into my lap, palm on palm, and slowly tilt
my head towards him. I establish eye contact, and hold it just past the
acceptable norm, stretch it out like cold toffee 'til he knows I'm not
all there. Oh fuck oh fuck of all the people in this fucking shithole
why'd I have to pick the looney tune? He's wearing a fleecy coat,
green. He's shorter than me, going bald. In his coat he looks like a
fucking leprechaun. His hair's cut short. I reckon he's got kids. I
smile so's he can see the tips of my teeth.

"Yeah," I say, teasing my words out, holding the smirk, "I have." For a
moment I think of grabbing his crotch, leaning in like fast and rough
and sticking my tongue down his throat. He looks a little rattled. His
face hasn't changed but it's in his eyes, I can tell. They're all
watery, you know, like baby eyes, puppy eyes. It's like his eyeballs
are trembling. I've got a semi from thinking of grabbing him. I'm
wearing loose grey tracksuit bottoms, a couple of sizes too big for me.
I stick my thumbs behind the elastic and drag them down to round my
knees. I've got hairy legs. Scar from playing football when I was
twelve. I was in goal, some bastard flew in and studded me.

There's plastic explosive taped round my thighs and a digital timer
strapped to my dick. My dick looks quite big what with me being aroused
and all. I look down at it for a sec. When I tense the muscles the
timer bobs up and down a little bit. The timer says 16:25. By my
wristwatch I make it twenty past four. I look back up at the bloke.
He's looking at me, he's about to get up, the wanker. He wants me, I
can tell.

"Don't go," I say. Five minutes. Time enough to tell my story.

Form and emptiness, Zen says, it's all form and emptiness. She was all
form and all emptiness, for deffo - an airhead with curves. See it's
when I go to my second session she's there, loose clothes but big tits,
you know, big even with the loose clothes. Definitely. She wasn't there
the first time but she's there now, and the first thing I thought was,
well like I loved her. She had like long dark tresses of hair and I
wanted to drag my fingers through them and kiss and lick her
face.

About three weeks later I saw her through the window of her house and
she was reading the Daily Express. I've never understood the Daily
Express. It's such a wanker's paper. I mean, what's it all about? It's
like, it's a shit Daily Mail. At least people read the Daily Mail, you
know, I know it's a fascist rag and all but it does it well and keeps
Tory pensioners happy, but like the Daily Express is like a shit
tabloid that totally doesn't get it. It's like it wants to be a
broadsheet but it's too wank and it's got no mandate. What's it all
about? What's its politics? Who the fuck reads the Daily Express except
for Manda? It's a Mickey Mouse wank-rag, man. What twat reads the Daily
Express?

But like, I'd started going to these meetings. It was supposed to be
like a Zen Dojo but it was a room with a varnished cork floor above a
health food shop called The Wellness Store, and instead of some badass
roshi it was just a middle aged woman called Debbie who probably had
sex like once when she was twenty two then the guy woke up, smelt the
coffee and baled and she'd thought she'd been in love, so she went all
Reiki and holistic therapy and probably turned into a lezzer. I don't
know what qualified her to take us through meditation sessions but, you
know, I'd decided that week I wanted to get enlightened.

I read that satori is like God realising who He is. I quite fancied
being God. I've got this T-shirt. It was black, and it said across the
front: 'ME AND MY GIRLFRIEND SPLIT UP OVER RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES. I
THOUGHT I WAS GOD AND SHE DIDN'T.' I had this other T-shirt, once. It
said: 'SAME SHIT. DIFFERENT DAY.' but I fell over in a park wearing it
and it got covered in dog shit, so I threw it away because the worms in
dog shit make you go blind.

So I went to this Zen place to get enlightened. I thought it might sort
me out. I don't like who I am, sometimes. I mean, I'm on all these
different drugs, because of my body chemistry. I just wanted a little
bit of peace. Just to rest my head and be normal, like a lickle lamb
like, you know?

Doing zazen wound me up more than anything. Debbie said it would be
tough at first. All I wanted to do for the full hour was to explode and
yell bollocks or jump up and run out. The second time I came Manda was
there and, like I said, she was wearing loose dark clothes like we all
have to, and she had big tits. I'm sorry for saying tits. I mean, I
loved her, I don't mean to be all rarr check out the totty lads, no
disrespect. I'm not like that. I can't help myself sometimes.

She had this cushion, a zafu, for sitting on while you meditate. It was
purple corduroy with black beads round the sides. I think she made it
herself. She left it behind one week and I half-inched it. At home, I
sat with it in front of me for a while, drinking instant coffee. I
picked it up and sniffed it. It didn't smell of much. Fabric. A little
bit of fags maybe. I knew she was a smoker. I'd seen her lighting up in
a pub once. She didn't see me. I was behind a partition. She smoked
Benson and Hedges, the low tar ones. Benson and Desperate are such crap
fags. Don't get me started on lights.

Later I unpicked some of the stitching with the craft knife from my
balsa wood plane kit and stuck my finger in. The stuffing was all white
like cotton wool. I drunk some more coffee and it got late. I left the
TV on with the sound down and switched all the lights off so the room
was all TV glow grey and blue, and the colours in the room changed when
it went to adverts or when it they had a dark street in the rain. I
chewed off all my nails then I had the idea that I could leave it in
the cleaning cupboard in the meeting room next time and she'd find it
and get it back, not knowing I'd had it for three days and stroked my
bell-end on it. Then I had this idea that I could put something inside
it and stitch it back up and she'd go on using it, and all the time I'd
know the thing was in it, but I didn't know what the thing was going to
be, but I knew it had to be good because otherwise all that would
happen is I'd see her sitting on it and the zafu flattening out under
her weight and I'd be pissed off that I didn't think of something
better, and it would get to me.

I thought of spitting in it, or putting in some hair, or like my chewed
off fingernails, or some spunk or something, but they all seemed crap,
too small. I wanted something that'd seep upwards while she meditated,
that would like poison her and make her want me or make her die or
anything, anything that would just do something to her. I just wanted
to do something to her, to have something happen to her that was
because of me.

Then on the TV there was a trailer for a programme and the programme
had a witch in it. I thought I could put a spell in the zafu. I wrote
something down on a piece of paper, it was like half a love letter and
half a love letter. It said love you love you Manda you bitch i fucking
hope you get your eyes put out and I wrote in biro pressing heavily. I
used a pad I got free on the front of Puzzle Monthly. It was a yellow
memo pad. Each sheet had Puzzle Monthly written diagonally across it. I
folded it in half lengthways, then changed my mind and unfolded it and
folded it diagonally, then folded that lengthways so it was a little
triangle, then I pushed the triangle into the cushion and pushed
stuffing all round it to hide it. I don't know how to sew so I just
used some superglue and some UHU and glued the gap back up.

Anyway, I left it where I said I would and I know Manda found it
because I watched her carrying it home. I followed her back to her
house. The street was only short, maybe ten or twelve houses in all.
The gardens were small and overgrown, and the pavement was full of
puddles from where it had rained that morning. When I saw her go into
her house my ears started buzzing and my face felt hot. I wanted to
light a cigarette but I knew I'd only drop it because my hands were
shaking. Anyway I didn't have any cigarettes because I don't smoke.
When I knew where she lived a little bit of wee came out and I felt
deaf and outside myself.

One night it was bin night and I accidentally knocked her bin over. It
had loads of bottles in and hit the ground with a crash, so I grabbed
the bin bag, just hugged it up into my arms and legged it. It was
massive and it smelt mouldy. As I ran it split and beans and something
sour and wet ran down my leg.

I look down at my cock and the timer but they're not there anymore. I
thought I had more time. The bus station smells of disinfectant now,
the roof's lower and paler and it has a neon bar light. The bloke's
gone too. I can see a door. I touch my face with my open hand, rub my
palm up and down against my nose then smell the snot. I sniff under my
fingernails. It wasn't real plastic explosive, just silly putty, but I
can make silly putty explode if I want to. I can make anything explode
if I want to. I once Eskimo kissed an alsatian then forced it down to
the ground and stamped on its head.