Nightwalking: A Short Story

Spiteful scars slashed her arms. “How did this happen to you.”

Brown circles ringed her eyes, she’d been walking the night.

“I was fourteen, and there was a razor, and I put it to my skin. And the pain, made me feel more alive. And I used to like waking up in my bed, soaked with blood.”

The sky was a dark brown, violent purple, lit up and illuminated. Street lamps ringed the roundabout, street cats howled and yapped and a nasty tramp walked by with a stolen bottle of wine sticking out of the pocket of his coat.

“It all started when I couldn’t sleep. I went out to smoke a cigarette on the pavement and a junkie started to talk to me. Since then, I go on these night walks. You see all the craziest stuff.”

A police car rattled past, sirens started to howl as they picked up the signal, to make chase. Foxes yapped, snarled underneath the train bridge. A group of rudeboys on the other side of the road are throwing bricks at the shining train line.

“Do you know they bombed everything along this route during the war, because it shone at night out of the black city. I said”

No cars are passing now, an old woman pushing trolleys with a face like a troll is coming this way.

“I know,” she said. The smells, the silence, the lights are beginning to go out in the tower blocks. Only one will stay on till four. I know, I watch these things.

“What are you looking for?”

There is no silence, everything hums, this is the white noise, the crackle of static, brown-yellow streetlight, of the city. Two stars.

“I can see things more clearly at night, when you’re in your room and just a pool of light is shining on a knife, like a puddle of light in darkness, shinning, You can see it more clearly. It’s like that with everything, she says.”

Her hair, red-brown, curling-straight, over old headphones. A helicopter passes overhead, my heart skips a beat. Shadows larger than myself, swirl over the train line. “They’re, there.” She says.

Third eye vision, pictures flash of an early childhood, frightened mother.

“Every family’s seen one. I can only say.”

We walk. The shops are closed; trash and needles litter the floor. I can taste the sorrow of the wind, Turkish men lurk in corners. Only a newsagent is open, like a cube of white light and chocolate.

“They always come up and talk to me, and confess, it’s almost as if I’m not really there. Almost like I’m a ghost…”she says.

We don’t need to talk, I know she sees what I see.

In an alley a man is a punching a prostitute.

‘You like it, you like it.’ Blood on the pavement spills in darkness, is black.

I can hear her screams from far away. Shadows and light roll round the corner, the clattering shaking of the bus. There is nobody on the bus, just the grease on the window where someone fell asleep, a strand of gold hair and a half eaten piece of chicken. She rolls her head back, and lets it drop over the top of the seat. I seem to see her eyes roll back into her head. She hiccups. We don’t talk, the music beats gently from the headphones before cutting out.

“I can feel, such pain. I can feel their pain. It cuts and glides through me,” she says.

I look out the window, at the main streets. I catch sight of the few Arab cafes, which never close. The ones where the pizzas sit behind glass for weeks, going cold and hard under electric yellow light. A group of guys are standing around and shouting. Leather jackets and jeans. The bus rattles; stops, bleeps and the lights turn off. There are crowds on the main street; everyone’s from somewhere else. Different languages. I’ve spent my life on these roads, by I still don’t know the stations names. A group of Italians pass, a police dog on a leash barks at an old man in a baseball cap. Christmas lights, big stars and adverts, cover up and commercialise the sky.

“There’s so much going on, there’s something, another level. Everything Is Happening in this city. It’s got seven million souls, some of them live in hotels, some of them live in holes.” She says.

A corner turned, and it’s another sphere another zone, of quiet squares and old houses, sleeping people and shiny cars. We stop. She swoons.

“They’re everywhere, they protect you too…. Hold my hand.” She says, breathes deeply.

The dead streets, and the silence now. Odd shops, obscure widows. This is another level, as if we have walked through glass. Rats crawl and scatter, tiny lights flash above doors. Far a siren, police chase, ambulance. Fading out.

“I’m looking for death. I want to walk the edge.” She says.

And I know she’s not lying. Busy streets now empty, rubbish piling up, the colour of the sky screwed up into a pitch of blackness before it starts to lose its shades.

“I, know. I feel them too.”

A knot ties and unties inside. An acheing, rush.

“I want to show you this place.” I said.

We continue, and then we’re under the train bridge. By the station. Next to the surviving record shop.

“Do you feel it?”

It drags me down, like another shade of bleakness is over my eyes, a heaviness sombreness sleepiness. It begins to mingle and swirl inside.

“Yes,” she says. “I’ve always felt it.”

Then we walk out, a few metres and stop. Light crispness, lucidity and clarity.

“That’s a plague pit,” I say.

Her pupils swell, glisten. Above a growl and a gush as the first plane passes. Her breath close, blows thick-wet-hot and cold, she is close to me. A white van pushes along, and the city begins to breath.

“I wasn’t even waiting for the sun to come up,” she says.

We walk, as men jump out of stations and cars. Begin to clean up as the light grows brighter. We stop, there’s aren’t many around just yet.

“I feel your pain, this longing to touch the faces of the dead, that’s why you wander the night.”

She looks at me, as a friend might gaze. Her cold face moves close through air, to mine, as a lover’s could. “Breathe. Let death fill down and spread. Breathe.”