Kenn Taylor

Raw yellow and white, the sun beat down hard and impossibly bright onto the city. Michael regretted not digging out his sunglasses as the five lads padded along the Strand in shorts, T-shirts and trainers, no socks.

This was the perfect day for it. It was Saturday, summer, 2008 too. Albert Dock was loaded with tourists. The Duck Tours vehicle bounced along the road past the group, its assortment of visitors gawping, Beatles songs blaring out.

The boys jostled each other as they went along, pulling tops and slapping arms till they reached the bridge filled with people streaming in both directions. A few tourists had stopped to gaze at the vista of the waterfront, sweating, squinting into slick digital cameras, looking for the perfect angle. Michael, smiling, eyed some of them menacingly and they cast their gaze away from him uneasily.

Leaning with his back to the dull, black bridge-side, arms outstretched along the railing, Leon quipped: “Who’ll be the first brave man to step up eh?”

Michael grinned widely at Leon, his dimples nearly reaching his narrow, brown eyes. Without speaking, he pulled off his washed-out grey t-shirt detailing some long-forgotten event, then stepped forward and mounted the wide ledge of the bridge in one movement.

He stood legs wide apart on the edge of the bridge and looked around him. Some passers-by were already stopping, shielding their eyes with their hands to look up at him standing in the sun. On the ledge he caught the wind blowing in cold and strong, straight from the river. It hit the sweat that covered his body, encasing him in a strange coolness as the moisture froze on him. He felt everything with renewed, innocent, strength. He was proud of his gym-enhanced body. They were watching him. He had power. He squeezed his toes around the edge of the hot metal bridge, feeling the sun harsh on his face and the beads of sweat sliding down slowly from his close-cropped hair to his crack.

Looking down, the water remained uninviting, a thick, slopping, miserable, green-brown. He turned around again, slower. More people had stopped.

“Stop posin Mike and fucking jump,” Evo said quickly.

He faced the river again, feeling now nothing more than the overwhelming heat of the day and the desire to escape it. He put his hands forward and leaped.

In an instant he was blinded by the full shock of the sun’s glare and screwed his eyes tight. Air rushed around him, but before he could recover his sight he was enveloped by the water. The cold sliced through him instantly. Sinking in the dark liquid, his eyes, ears and nose filled. The power he had only a few seconds previously vanished.

He carried on plummeting downwards through the drink, eventually slowing in his descent till he felt his whole body turning, cradled in the water. The darkness was total. Sounds surged in his ears and then slowly began to fade. There was nothing outside of him, nothing past or present, only the water and the cold.

Sensing danger, he struggled with his arms, thrusting forwards to what he thought was the surface in sheer panic. But he found no respite from the total darkness that overwhelmed his senses. His every movement was heavy and laboured and drained his resources further. Whichever way he turned seemed to bring him no closer to any light. He tried to speak and a pained roar flew out in bubbles.

Michael felt the slow ebbing away of his energy and began to cease in all thought and function.

As his movement became ever slower, weakened by the pressure, he felt himself begin to disappear into the blackness and accepted his fate. He knew it was right.

Then with a rush he was dragged rapidly back. Shooting towards the glare, he pierced the top of the water and coughed up half the Mersey as he broke the surface.

Through stinging eyes he looked up to see the boys cheering and tourists clapping. Feeling the sun once again attacking the back of his neck, he swam towards the old metal ladder, his vision blurred, his head pounding. He was back. He was powerful.

But he already missed the cold.

By Kenn Taylor

By Kenn Taylor

“CAMUE!” Tom spat with vigour. “Don’t you talk to me about fuckin Camue!”

“I never said I didn’t think he was an interestin writer, I just disliked his characters at the time.”

“Oh come on. You couldn’t handle the Existentialists for years cos yer filled yer head with all that Marxzist bollocks. And now you’re trying to tell ME about Camue.”

“In me old age I realised the cunt had a point. But there were just too many fuckwits in my college carrying around a Penguin Classic of The Outsider and wearing long coats and leaving their shitty fucking poems around and all the dopey bitches ate it up.”

They fell silent. Tom sucked hard on his tightly wrapped rollie, scrutinized the end to see if it was worth taking another drag, then squashed it hard into the ashtray along with its brothers and sisters. Sean casually examined the long varnished-over graffiti hacked into the wood of the table, while Tom rolled another one from his half-empty Golden Virginia packet before re-igniting the conversation.

“Well, it’s not Camuze fault ye went to a wanker’s school.”

They both went quiet again and gently surveyed the yellowed back room of the pub and the strange gaggle of Wednesday afternoon drinkers slumped in its corners. Sky bubbled away in one corner while the feet of innumerable pedestrians flitted past the high-level window which let most of the light into the once grand, submerged lounge bar.

Sean restarted the chatter once more. “Eh, talking of frog writers, I read this thing in The Gurdian the other day, and it reminded me…I bet you used to think tha Rambo was pronounced Rimbaud, like it’s spelt not Rambo.”

Tom snorted, “Ahhh, fer sure, you n’all? For yeaaaars I thought tha till I was talking to some university cunt when I used to go to the writing group when I was about 25 and he was like “It’s Rambo you cretin” in the arseyiest voice you can imagine. I would have lamped him there and then, but I just thought he was wrong, so I was like ‘Naah man, that’s the dude out of the filums ya know. It’s Rimbauued! And he just walked off. It was only when I saw something on telly about him…”

“Ha, come to think of it, that happened to Cantona too ya know?”

“Cantona? Eric karatekicking fucking Cantona?”

“Aye. Some journo asked him ‘Oose yer hero Eric?’ and he was like ‘Rambo’ in his dusky Frenchie and people started sending him all these fucking pictures of Sly Stallone!”

“Ha. That’s classic. Ah, the issue of being mostly self-taught. I used to say Hedgemoney for years rather than hegenemy.”

“You fucking twat. Even I knew tha.”

“Bugger off. Anyway. Did you say you’d been reading The Guardian again? It’s bad for ye health tha. It’s a slippery slope, you’ll be listenin to Radio 4 next and then you might as well just fuckin top yerself.”

“Ah, don’t get all Daily Mirrorfied on me sunshine it doesn’t fucking wash. You used to read The Guardian every day when you were last working and you could nick it from there. Yer just cheap.”

“Well,” said Tom, staring into the black of his pint and then back at Sean, “just don’t start getting Private Eye or I’ll fucking disown you.”

“No fear.”

There was a marked silence as again they looked around the room. Tom glanced at Sean. “Same again?”

“Yeah. Oh aye, get us some Bacon Fries while you’re at it.”

“Rot yer insides!”

“Fuck off veggie!”

Sean swayed his well-lubricated head slowly and looked around the room once more at the other drinkers all talking their respective bollocks and thought: Was there anything in life better that this?

Tom retuned with two more jars of Beamish, a pack of Bacon Fries and some no-mark Cheese and Onion crisps stuffed in his pockets.

“Talking of long beuks, ya finished Ulysses yet?” He said as he plopped down the pint glasses and tossed the Fries at Sean.

“Ah, god man. No, not yet. I am ploughing through it. It’s not fucking easy though man. How long did it take you?”

“I shudder te think. It was years ago n’all. I should probably read it again to be honest.”

“I mean ‘Portrait’ was hard going enough as it was. Especially that bit in the middle were he goes on and on about his Catholic guilt over shagging that prossie. He needed an editor man. I would have been like ‘Nice book Jimmy, but shave about twenty pages off the guilt trip’. It was fuckin depressin man. When I read it I was in college and it brought back all those church memories too. I was like ‘Ah, I’m deffo going to hell after what I did with Sarah McLaughlin.”

“Ha. It never leaves ya, lapsed or not.”

“Aye, lapsed Catholic, lapsed Socialist, lapsed Evertonian. But a glimmer of faith always still always burns in yer somewhere.”

“Apart from with the Evertonianism!”

Liverpool is a city of extremes. That is its genius and that is its folly.

Liverpool is the second city of the greatest empire the world has ever known. Liverpool is a decaying backwater, the laughing stock of a twisted country.

Liverpool is St George’s Hall, the greatest Neo-Classical edifice in the UK. Liverpool is row upon row upon row of crumbling, boarded-up terraces.

Liverpool had more millionaires than anywhere outside London. Liverpool has the worst poverty, deprivation, disease and alcoholism rates in Britain.

Liverpool attracts people from all corners of the globe to come and live in its vitality. Liverpool repels its own children from the darkness, desperation and cruelty it inflicts upon them.

Liverpool has a world-renowned friendliness and openness, unknown elsewhere in the UK. Liverpool hates outsiders, and not to have the accent is not to belong.

Liverpool has a legendary dry wit that stands for no bullshit. Liverpool is arrogant, philistine and bloody-minded.

Liverpool always puts a brave face on, walking tall even when faced with despair. Liverpool wallows in its own self-pity and does nothing to cure its own situation.

Liverpool is united in a crisis. It never walks alone. Liverpool cries as its children are slaughtered, but no one will ever dare to GRASS on DE FAMLEE.

Liverpool is Saturday night – the lights, sounds and magic of one hundred thousand people determined to have a good time. Liverpool is Sunday morning – vomit, dirt and black blood swilling through the deserted pavements.

Liverpool is North Liverpool: decay, despair and pain etched into the very fabric of the buildings. Liverpool is South Liverpool: fucking poets drinking fucking plonk in fucking wine bars.

Liverpool is Catholic: drunken, fatalistic, dramatic and burdened with guilt. Liverpool is Protestant: pious, arrogant, brutal and judgmental.

Liverpool is the dreamer gazing at the sunset and the Liver Birds from the shadow of the Anglican Cathedral. Liverpool is the vicious, dead-eyed fucker coming up behind them, looking for a fix that the rich architecture won’t provide.

Liverpool is an extreme city. That is its brilliance. And it’s folly. The city is a thousand broken, beautiful dreams shattered on the rocks of reality. Always willing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, gun always pointed firmly at its own feet. People love Liverpool passionately, people hate Liverpool passionately, and it is these polar extremes that create the culture. It can be tough, but always remember, that famous line from Harry Lime in Orson Welles’ The Third Man:

“Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

The cracklin speakers make it sound strangled, distent, but it’s still unmistakeably a recordin of a posh girl who pronounces everythin just so:

“The next train to arrive at platform 2 is the 11:15 service to Liverpool Lime Street, calling at:

Deansgate
Trafford
Irlam
Birchwood

Padgate
Warrington Central
Hunts Cross

Liverpool South Parkway

Edge Hill

And Liverpool Lime Street”

Bet she’s a right filthy bitch that one.

I’m just glad it’s fucking coming though. Can feel the tiredness deep in me bones. Getting this job over and getting home is all I can think of. It’s been a right slog this one, and now this train.

After we did the switch, I legged it cross town to catch the ten o’clock from Piccadilly, only to watch it saunter away from the platform on me approach. Fuck. This meant another ride on the gauntlet: The Last Train From Manchester To Liverpool. Always from Oxford Road, always 11:15pm. It’s an experience whatever day of the week, but a Satde night was going to be hellish.

I wandered back across the city as it began to really light up for the weekend. The grand ald cotton buildings of Mancland, now neoned-up pleasure palaces, much like the old dock warehouses back in the ‘pool. We’ve got more in common than we’d sometimes like te think ye know.

Least Oxford Road had some decent pubs to kill the time in like. But it’s ard not to feel shifty carrying a large packet and drinking alone at this time a night. I ended up skulkin in the corner of The Salisbury with a Guinness, watchin the clock.

Havin no desire to miss the last train and have’t spend a cold night curled up in a photie booth till the next service at 5:50am, I left the warmth of the pub just before the train was due. Up the slope and onta the right-hand platform, as is custom, and I joined the ranks staring at the murky floor, clutchin bags, arms and each other. The bitter cold nips through us as it always does on this high, uncovered station, chillin even the brightest of travellers into a resigned look. Only a few late night revellers wearin thick beer jackets seem immune te the weather and fall over each other, singin and shoutin. The dull, yellow light of the waiting room is invitin and repulsive at the same time.

The train slowly pulls in, an, as one, we all shuffle quickly te the doors. The loud group at the end seem determined to make as much as a kerfuffle about getting on as is possible, red-faced and white shirted, they carry on singin as they barge on past tha few people tryna get off.

Meself, I’m more polite, but still determined. As soon as the last person is off I step on in one bound. I am going to get a fuckin seat. I push along and spot the nearest wiv a window seat still free. It’s still gonna be a while before we move off, always the shittest fucking set of carriages they can dig out too. I press me face against the cold glass, past the reflections from the carriage lights, and block out the banter and chatter and noise of the engine tickin over and imagine livin in one of the posh flats by the station. After a few more of these runs maybe eh. I look around at me fellow passengers, all headin back to Merseyside this late for their own reasons.

Lovers on their way back home alone as late as possible, commuters that ha’t stay behind in their miserable jobs, stag dos, hen dos, leaving dos and general nights out on the piss nearin their end.

I guess some of em might be coming for a night out in Liverpool, not many tho. It’s nerlee always the other way round. We would always need the Mancs more than they needed us. We’re like a retarded younger brother, an embarrassment they reluctantly associate with. Always laggin behind, needing help and a way inte the outside world.

One of the lary gang from before starts singing a Queen song. He’s a beady-eyed fucker with a cheap gold chain bulgin around his fat neck. Directly cross from me, and it seems oblivious to the fat bastard murdering the soft-rock ballad, two excited guys in their late-teens discuss the gig they’ve just seen at the Ritz.

Now, that’s summat I can relate too. I’ve been doing this run for years. First as a kid to see gigs, then in my own band playin em. Fame was slow to come though, so I started flyering for a club, then did a bit of bar work and eventually, I became a bar manager. As is custom in that trade, I passed the nights of mopping up the piss and chucking out the cunts with a large amount of cocaine. Now, that is a shitty drug. Started taking out the till to keep up with the bills, and, well, you should not fuck with the kind of people who own places like tha. If you play with fire, you get burned. Then buried. If yer lucky.

So, to pay off the debt, I do what they tell me. Whatever they tell me. Courier mostly, stuff like this, swapping packages with the Mancs. I didn’t need to be told what the alternative would be. I’ve done other things too, things I’m not proud of, but you do what you need to survive in this life. I like to tell myself it beats the 9-5, but fuck knows what it’s doing for me soul.

Life’s funny like tha, simple dreams can lead you down strange, dark avenues till you don’t know which way is up anymore. I did used to think a was a good person. But you can slip downwards, and ye don’t realize it till ye hit the bottom. But eh, morals mean nothing. And gangsters at least, always pay on time – which is more than I can say for some of the ‘legitimate’ businessmen I’ve worked for in tha past. I’m not really profiting off anya this anyway, me one-room flat and dodgy space heater attests to that. But still, I’d rather be back home there than amongst the detritus of Warrington’s latest shotgun weddin.

The train finally starts to drag its battered frame out of Manchester into the wilds of Northwest. Through forgotten towns once dominated by anonymous mills and factories, now dominated by even more anonymous retail parks, wide and dead in the night.

As the train slips into its familiar rhythm, the weariest passengers stare straight ahead, eyes wide open, mind closed. The lucky few with MP3s close their eyes. A solitary, red-nosed drunk slumps forwards on his table, head in is hands like a condemned man. Some posh goth girls headin home having been to Manc to see their latest American idols chatter quietly and look a little nervous. The few pints I managed in between picking up tha package have only added to me headache and the pain starts to move into me eyes under the garish lights of the train.

“Caaame ern girls, letz sink a song.” Says the fat Queen singer from earlier to the goths. Timidly but friendly dey chat back, doing as little as possible to encourage im. I squeeze me eyes shut.

I dunno what’s in the packets I carry and I don’t care much. I tell me friends I’m carrying severed ears back to rival gangs to wind em up, but I reckon it’s just drugs. Maybe guns. That’d bother me a little. That’s a whole different ballgame tha. But no chance of being caught, who’s gonna fuckin check? No one gives a fuck about people on trains. Specially not a midnight inter-regional service through the North West of Fucking England.

I could be carryin a fuckin bomb and I wouldn’t know to be honest. If tha went off it would cause a bit of a ruckus, but not tha much, this isn’t the London Underground. It’s unlikely anywey, the terrorists just wouldn’t botha. They’re smart them guys in Al-Qaeda; they know were the power is, how to strike at the heart of a country, and it isn’t Newton-Le-Willows.

We’re into Merseyside now, nerlee home. It’s hard to tell tho, all dese little towns are almost indistinguishable in the dark, cept the stations now carry the yellow and grey M of Merseyside Transport Authority, rather than the red and grey M of Manchester Transport Authority. Vive la difference eh.

Me head’s tryna to do its own forced shutdown. I draw me collar up past me face as far as possible to try’n block out the world. What am I doing on this fucking train eh, where did it all go so wrong?

A sudden jolt and the sound of metal grindin violently on metal startles me awake, I go onto instinctive alert and glance round. The carriage is now empty apart from meself. Good. Then notice a thin stream of spital encrusted on me chin and I wipe it away with a tinge of embarrassment. I look out the window to see where we are, but apart from the darkness there’s only a constant line of orange-red lights that reveal little. Still, we must be near Edge Hill now. Almost home and no conductor, my decision not to purchase a ticket was clearlee a wise one.

I always get off at Edge Hill, which is local parlance by the way, for, Coitus Interuptus – last stop before the terminus see. No chance at all then of being stopped and asked what I’m carryin there. Now and then dey do have dogs at Lime Street.

The train shutters on quicklee. A little shock runs through me as the lights suddenly disappear outside, replaced by total blackness. Bollocks, we must have already passed Edge Hill and have gone into the deep, dank cuttin that takes us that last bit into the city proper. Ah well, should be fine. I close me eyes for this last bit and sigh in relief at the approaching end of me journey. I look again through the window at the sandstone walls of the cutting, scarred from the tools and explosives that hacked through it all those years ago. It looks different in the dark, craggier and redder.

“Shit.” I’m shaken from me weary musing and exclaim aloud wen the realisation dawns on me that me whole leg area is soakin. Ah, no surely I haven’t fuckin pissed meself?

I glance around, definitely no one in sight, thank fuck. The wetness is now going down into the seat and is starting to soak inte me arse.

Careflee, I lift up the box and look underneath. The bottom of it is wet through, brown at the edges and in the centre, deep, dark, red. Bood. Unmistakeably fucking blood. Lots of it. Seeping through the box and onto me legs.

I’m gripped bya terrible sickness, what am I supposed to do with this now? What the fuck have they got me carryin?

An idea flashes in me head to dive into the toilet. But there’s no toilet on this typea train. I swing around again at what sounds like someone approaching. It’s nothing tho. Fuck fuck fuck.

I gentlee place the box down on the opposite seat, sit right back down and stare at it, losing myself a little in the train’s constant, reassurin rhythm.

Should I try’n throw it out of the window? No I think it’s too late for that. We must be nearin home soon, not much chance to do anything really. The train rattles on, louder. Through the windows the panorama of dark rock continues te speed past.

I’ll have te see what’s inside. God help us, but I gotta know what I’m dealin wiv here. I get hold of the external wrapping of the parcel, plastic and bubble wrap soaked in blood an pull through the sodden material. It flakes apart in me hand, the blood smearing all over me fingers. There’s a brown box inside. I lift the top.

In it is a rectangle, frameless mirror, a ffuckin mirror. And no sign of the blood that coats thee outside.

What the fuck, whats this some sorta mind game, what are they playin, what the fuck is happening?

The train moves ever faster now, more erratic. The sides of the carriage shake under the speed.

I place the box back on the seat opposite and look at the red smeared all over me hands.

The rattlin of the train increases and the internal lights flicker, I stand up and ready meself to get off, clinging to the hand rail as the wheels screetch along beneath me. I look down the corridor of the train. All carriages are the same, all empty as far as the eye can see in both directions.

The juddering gets more violent, I grip the handrail harder till my palms start to sweat, then the train lurches to a fast grinding halt, swinging hard forwards then back again to stop. And then silence. Through the windows I can see nothing but darkness. The doors open, all of em, with a faint hiss. There’s a bad smell in the air.

It seems as if me long-awaited judgement is finally come.

This story appeared on the website Rainy City Stories.

By Kenn Taylor

At the centre

A vast hub of solid gold

With a thousand diamond and platinum inlays

All gleaming to the glory of the wheel

Out of it, a million interlacing spokes reach out into the world

Shining still, near the centre

But as they loop further out

The dirt starts to stick

From the wheel that grinds

Keeping the hub from the ground

And by the edge, deep engrained

Blood and shit and sweat and sick

And the ever fragmenting framework

That will one day

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