Previously Unpublished SHORT STORY

The dust has been blown away. The yellowing pages perused, and the decision made.

One of the series of short stories I wrote in the late 1990s is published for the first time below.

It's so old, you can still smoke upstairs on buses in it.

I never released it before mainly because I didn't like the title. Still don't. But I've adapted it slightly and I'm a little happier with it.

Spoiler alert: It's about a guy who used to be a baby, and it's not a laugh a minute. So if you're looking for something cheery or uplifting, best look elsewhere.

BEATEN BABIES

I’m not a hard man. Let me just say that. I’m not. Show me an animal in distress and I won’t eat meat for a week. Put me in between brawling blokes in a bar and I’ll buy them both a drink. Ask me if there was a war on would I fight, I would die.

            I just look hard. It’s in my face. I was born with it, people expect it of me. Expect hardness.

            My face has got worse since life got me smoking. The inhaling lines you before it kills you. Dries you out. It’s not a moist habit, smoking. But it looks hard and you need to look hard these days. Everyone’s at it, looking hard, getting hard haircuts, playing hard music in hard cars. Doing hard crosswords. Reading hardback books by hard authors featuring hard heroes.

Giving up smoking’s hard, though I’ve never tried. I can tell from the adverts and from the signs I see on buses, through restaurant windows and in parts of pubs. It’s something a lot of people want to do, smoking, me included. I’ll smoke anywhere I like, mind. In pubs, outside restaurants, on buses, and I won’t pay the fine. I’ll sit upstairs at the back of the bus where I used to as a kid. Where I smoked and passed comment on people as they came up sweaty stairs to sit down. Where I told babies’ mothers to shut it while their loved ones bawled their bald heads off. 

            Now I still sit at the back to smoke but I’m not so loud. I don’t pass comment on people because I don’t want people passing comment on me. Don’t want them sitting behind or anywhere near me, especially schoolkids, because my head’s balding. It’s beginning to look like a hairy polo. And it has a tendency to dandruff my shoulders. And kids will point this out to you. They’ll whisper and laugh and point and say dandruff and baldy, like I don’t know I’ve got shortcomings.

            If you sit at the back no one sees you. That’s the way to handle it. Prevention, not cure. From the rear you see other people’s problems, and there are plenty of them around. You get the uncontrollable shakers, the old ladies who chew air, the young men with bleach white stains on their hair, pretty girls with rashes on their faces, the neck boils, leg lumps, shoulder hair, the moles of the proles. There are so many things that can go wrong with you.

            I’m sitting at the back now, in a rush to get home, nervously smoking. No one complains on this bus, which pukes out fumes far more toxic than anything I can produce. With the concept of conductors consigned to the graveyard, no one comes near enough to a face like mine to complain. Some young suits jaded by dull work might turn round and have a look, but they see my face, calculate trouble and have the sense to turn right back round and face the front like good boys.

            I get home, having smoked five, to find my babies have been left on the doorstep and I’m angry but happy because I don’t have to face the delivery man. They always look hard, delivery men. You have to be hard to survive driving as much as they do. Cutting up or trying to kill motorists because they’ve got deadlines. You need confidence and hardness to do that because you never know how hard the drivers you’re cutting up are until their face is in your window or their fist’s in your face. So I’m not sure how to handle delivery men. I’m not sure where to sign, whether to tip. I like to see a cross where I’m supposed to sign, not just the point of a hard-skinned, broken-nailed nico-tainted finger. I like to hear the thanks when I tip. Maybe a smile of recognition that says, cheers mate, if I see you down the pub, I might shout you a half for that tip. Might help you out if you got into a bit of hardship.

            I pick up my babies. They’re soft but it’s hard opening my front door quickly. There’s three keys that have to be employed. Can’t be too careful round the estate. People with time on their hands and on their CVs, if you catch my drift. The lock that came with the door didn’t keep evil thoughts out, let alone the hard and bumfluffed acned drugged kids determined to break in. That’s why I wasted no time getting a locksmith called Jones to sort me out one of those five lever mortice deadlocks the insurance people like. Expensive, but the peace of mind and lower premiums make it worth the while.

            Safely inside I caress my soft babies, warming them with my hand and cheek because they’re still cold from being abandoned on my doorstep. It’s amazing what rubbish you get with babies these days. There are loads of leaflets, offering offers I don’t want to be offered. Discounts that don’t count. Holidays that take weeks. I put them to one side and won’t look at them later. I’m careful to put the invoice to the other side. I don’t want trouble. I’m not a hard man like I said. It’s hard getting away without paying for things these days. I’ve tried, but those big computers they’ve got, the huge hardware and sophisticated software always gets you paying more in the end.

            Now I’m here and my babies are safe, I feel guilty about rushing home. I clipped a few heels at Victoria station, tutting, swearing, muttering to myself at all the mad people who got in my way to get out.  At one stage they even forced me to raise both my arms in front of me, and walk across the concourse to platforms 15 to 19, swinging them left to right and back again like a Dalek. I clubbed a few but felt sorry for none, they should keep their distance. People moaned and tutted and looked and oyed and frowned but thought better than to mess with someone who looked like me.

            I’m taking the first soft baby out of the package and I’m nailing it on the wall. It doesn’t hang easy but they rarely do. Some of the insides spill out like intestines but that doesn’t worry me. It’ll happen sooner or later. You’re not meant to nail babies to walls, I know that. Then again people know they’re not supposed to drive faster than thirty miles an hour in a built up area, or smoke in no smoking zones.

            It takes some hammering, some straightening, a step back, a tilt of the head, another adjustment, then a nod of self-satisfaction, before it’s time to unwrap the next one. It’s hard getting things straight. I’ll have a fag thank you very much and think about it.

            The phone rings mid-thought-and-fag. I answer it but it’s only telesales. Nearly always is telesales. You can tell they’re reading from a pre-prepared script and that they know they’re being monitored by some balding adulterer in the office upstairs who’ll count the seconds they spend in the toilet. That’s why I refrain from telling them to go away until I’ve listened to them spew out their spiel. Telesales is hard. But when I’ve had enough I say ‘Go away, I’m not interested unless I’ve won any money, in which case, don’t go away. Post it to me at the address you’ve already got and then go away.’ Amazingly some of them don’t take that as a polite no. Those hard-nosed customers get my pre-prepared script which goes ‘I’ve recently had my windows double-glazed, my kitchen re-fitted and my roof re-tiled. No I’ve never thought about a facial or a weekend at a health farm because they won’t let me smoke at the health farm will they, and I need to smoke for my health so if you don’t go away now, I know people who can trace this call and I’m going to come round and bite both your arms off.’

            That usually does the trick.

            I’ve finished my fag and I’m hanging the second baby on the wall. This one goes straight up first time. It’s easier when you’ve got the first one to feed off. Just line the tops up. I notice the third baby’s wrapped badly. Some dirty hardnut’s had his hands on it. Probably been on display somewhere. In some warped warehouse where it’s been kicked about like a football by hard blokes with nothing better to do.     

            The fourth and final baby’s the hardest to unwrap. No air in it. Must have suffocated. People don’t know how to look after them these days. How to let them rest in peace. The polythene doesn’t tear easily. Though once I’ve bitten it with my teeth it tears all right, and after I’ve hammered the softie to the wall, I take the polythene and start wrapping it around my balding head because I’ve heard it helps hair regrowth. That’s what they said about rubbing banana skins or marmite into your scalp after standing on your head for fifteen minutes a day. I’ve tried them all. I’ll do anything, because losing hair is tangible evidence that my body’s dying.

And I don’t feel I’ve lived yet.

            Breathing hard now, I use the string from the package to tie it nice and tight around my neck. Don’t want air getting in. Air that other people have used and regurgitated and spat in and choked in. I then circle sellotape around my head like I’m wrapping a mummy, just to make sure.

            Now I couldn’t be happier, watching my breath condense on the bag, feeling the warmth of my own air over my head, the tingle in the scalp that must surely be the start of hair regrowth. But I’ve been here before and I’m back here again. Nothing’s changed. I’ve gone nowhere. I’m going back when I want to move on. I’m losing hair and looking like a baby again and I haven’t lived yet.

            I repeatedly crash my dying brains against the soft white baby pillows on my wall, thinking about travelling to work tomorrow and back home, back to work, back home back to work back home. Travelling forever, getting nowhere. And I’m thinking about the babies bawling and the heads balding until I’m ga ga.