Richard's Road

I should’ve never followed the rabbit. We are all mad here so it’s alright. We are all kind—that’s what they say when you are off your meds. You have to wait for your time to die.

The chain hung.

He stood in the doorway while I was on the loo, leaning against the frame and eating off a plate.

He shoved my phone, sliding it across the tile floor straight toward my feet, then got up from his crouch. I pressed my corn-bitten toes into my slippers. My skin itched.

The light shone high in the ceiling behind him. He stood bowlegged, blocking the doorway. The light fell on his shoulder, casting his silhouette forward. It touched the porcelain flat like a dark patch and crept up my thighs until his head and shoulders pooled right into my lap.

Ping.

Nothing on the screen, but something woke up inside it. Two tiny clicks, as if the phone switched on, then the grains tuning in, growing louder, bubbly like a voice under water, until it cleared:

“Even if you get out, it never ends.”

I fought the last embarrassing shit down the toilet. He waited until I was finished, then reached in, grabbed me, and dragged me into the room.

He set his plate down on the nightstand. As he chewed, his eyes rolled back, his head bobbing like a stick jerking in water. Euphoric from the food, he clenched his fist hard, the light catching his knuckles, slick from his obsessive hand moisturiser. Then that sound, the sing-song vibration rattling in his throat, his eyes darting erratically toward me.

Unable to stomach the tension, I shoved my earphones in and twisted them. Desperate to drown out the noise. But before the music could even start, his lips parted.

“Look, I think you should just go home to your mother.”

Gaze defiantly riveted to the floor. Refusing to lift his eyes.

The rejection washed over me like a chewed and discarded bone ravaged by dogs and tall men in the family. I looked down at my clean-cut nails and my freshly styled hair, still remembering how I looked in that burgundy gothic dress on a wedding day where nobody showed up, but under my skin, I already felt dirty, matted, discarded. As if my bleak reality had already crystallised around me. Fuck. Panic. It was late, and I wouldn’t even have access to public toilets at this hour.

Shoppers rushed. Crows caw. Clouds weeping with mist.

Men built student accommodation here, charging for every single inch. Clawing and gnawing at what they owned. Students. Lobbing the growing fetuses when they outgrow the scam. But it’s a lie. A lie that hardly anyone believes.

I left out of the taxi and let the door slam. I left my dresses, my crystals and singing bowl, all of it behind, things I couldn’t carry, things that weighed the same as my past. Just walked. The acerbic wind bit into my cheeks, twisting my skin.

Nobody questioned me.

Trudging. Until a siren wailed in the distance.

Ping.

A notification on the glowing screen: “Have you seen this lady?”

I stared at my own face on the glass. Wanted to scream back at the screen: No the fuck I haven’t. Am I supposed to be searching for myself now too? Panic turned inside me like rusted screws, tightening into anger.

“Sorry, excuse me,” I asked a man who wasn’t a shadow on the pavement. “Do you know where I can use the toilet? I’ve just been made homeless.”

“Sorry to hear. You can have two of my blankets if you want. Just down there, next to Holland. The nice man who owns the restaurant always lets me in.”

“Oh thank you so much. Thank you.”

Used the loo in a much less embarrassing way this time. Then hunted for a spot no one had already claimed. Sat with the blankets, clutching them so close I could cry from the warmth of it. The wind swiped by. At least there was an overhead. Rain. Not so much of a problem now. If it falls, it falls.

Two shoes stopped next to me.

“A girl like you should not be out here.”

An accent. I looked up. Her voice sounded creeping. Raspy and old.

But kind.

“No choice ma’am, life happens.”

“I don’t have to know little miss. Seen it all before. Hear what… when you can… just go down to the council and they will sort you out. Just down there… Victoria Street.”

I nodded. Smiled. Then she left.

Maybe I would’ve been too much of a burden if she had taken me home.

I slept at the bus stop outside the council.

Had a feeling if I slept on the steps I would look no longer human.

So I watched. Eyes drooping. Slanting down with sleep. Watching them too closely. The strangers.

Worried. Drawing too much attention to myself.

I’ve heard of many rapes.

A deluge of rain fisted down onto the glass over my head.

A wide overhead this time.

The harshness of the bench made me push back toward the edge of the seat. Up against the glass. Rested my back with my feet dangling. To feel like a child again.

Toasty. Outside.

The bus stopped. Avoided the eyes of the driver. I couldn’t tell.

Pity? Hunger? Care? What?!

Let out a breath as he drove off.

I handed her my phone.

She removed the back. Slipped my SIM card out and replaced it with a donated one. A new number. A new frequency.

I looked at the man standing with her. Didn't say anything. After the remaining formalities, I didn't hold onto her kindness. Why would I? I was leaving again. She would be gone. Just like that lady with the accent. She would go home to a family. Someone she could trust.

And I...

I rode the bus.

Got off and walked up a street littered with graffiti and fresh spit. Looked like a dark alley but was an open road. Ahead, a fresh lawn. A sudden reverie of home blinding my reality.

Then my foot stepped over broken bottles.

The door opened. The lady came into view. She walked through one door, then another. Looked like a painting. Not quite real, but very human of her. Her presence didn't reach. A distinct hardiness about her. Focused. Whatever corporate nosebleed she had, it completely devoured everything but her patience.

“There you are. Come inside. Sign a few papers and I’ll have you up in your room.”

I stepped onto the worn-out, sand-coloured carpet. Would’ve been better as wood. Could still feel the unforgiving hardness under my shoes.

“Thank you.”

“Got clothes and towels? Missing anything specific?”

“A robe, I think. Towels will be… nice.”

“Let's go—the keys!”

She took the set from the desk, and we ascended the steps.

“Walk fAsster you ssstupid bitch. Where is daddy and mommy?”

“Ma’am?”

Biting my lip hard to stop it from trembling.

“Sorry about the stairs, sweetie. Take your time.”

The worker's voice was normal. The other one came from my coat pocket—a thin, scratching frequency that buzzed through my coat and rattled straight through my teeth.

I pulled my phone out.

0.28

0.29

0.30

Clumsily thumbing the red button. Trying to end the call. It kept going. Keeping time. Until the screen snapped dark.

Only when I reached the top of the stairs did I bend over. Touched my knees as I gained control of my breath, huffing out the tiredness.

“...Returned... grrk… alcohol poisoning. Severe trauma. Hey. Hey kid. You want to be my friend? They said someone new was coming.”

The worker stood at the top of the steps. She didn't move. Didn't breathe. Just squinted down at the phone still clutched in my trembling hand.

Then her eyes widened, pupils dilating into white circles of panic. She lunged forward, grabbed the device straight out of my grip, her fingers freezing.

“Your room,” she whispered, her voice cracking through her corporate mask. “At the end. Go.”

I didn't wait. Didn't care that she still held the keys—and my phone. I just moved toward the open door.

Nothing was decorated. All the doors I walked alongside were closed—until they weren't.

I saw one man, mouth agape, as if it were surgically irreversible. Another, standing with hands on hips, a toothless smile. Then the one who looked like he wanted me inside his room, lurking near the hinges of the door, one eyeball missing—just a socket glazed over with skin like pink fleshy petals.

⁠ HIS PERSPECTIVE

Off to the building's side entrance.

Except I shouldn't have known she was here. She was supposed to go to her mother's.

My dashboard screen had flared to life like a blinding star bursting the moment I hit the roundabout, the built-in GPS maps spun like a rainbow fan before locking into a worming neon routing line. No address listed. Just a destination point flashing over a layout of Richard’s Road.

Then the car speakers snapped.

A deep strangled intake of air cut through the wet gargled choke, like someone desperately trying to breathe through a pile of wet sheets and a closed throat. It rattled my dashboard, making my throat tighten and my back hurt from bending forward.

The call timer on the screen blinked into existence:

0.01

0.02

Through the white noise and that scratching voice, the automated routing voice didn’t give directions. It played back the sound, slippers slapping on tile steps. Ascending or descending, I couldn’t tell. My own voice, loud and spiked with venom, blasted through the car cabin, playing back a fight we hadn’t even had yet:

“Walk faster, you stupid bitch!”

I had followed the map blindly. Drawn by a mixture of rage and cold contempt that she would choose to live without me when she left, I knew I said that she would go to her mother's... Now, standing outside the side door, my phone vibrated in my pocket, a buzz so strong it jumped against my thigh. I pulled the phone out quickly.

I looked up and saw her.

In front of her stood a group of men—a handful of the building's regulars spilling out the side door. Two figures with arms folded like titans, feet wide apart. Another man stepped out, grinned with rotten teeth, and spat into the grass. A few more shadowed the doorway behind them. Faces I’d never seen, but all wearing that same hollow, predatory look.

“She told us everything,” one of them coughed, the voice creeping and raspy. “She belongs to us now. Only way you can ‘ave her is if you come round some time. Sign up and your pockets is ours. She’ll be yours, innit.”

Then the girl I knew, my wife, crawled toward me. Bending her body at impossible angles. That was the same body I fucked, the same body drawn tight in that burgundy gothic dress she bought for our wedding. Nobody came. I should’ve given her a real wedding. Even as I stand here, I feel like I have aged, but I know I am still the same careless, good-for-nothing man that she never even realised I was. Religion makes you blind.

I could hear her bones cracking against the tarmac, and a swarm of pigeons flew off the building behind me and went about the sky. Somehow, she looked like she had been here for years. Gray. Decayed.

But I was sure I had just told her to leave this morning.

I bolted.

Ran straight back to my car, slammed the door, screeched away from the curb, and drove blindly to the nearest pub. Desperate for a drink, desperate to do what I’ve always done. Run from my problems or rub one out.