Second Star (Unfinished)

You know those dreams you have? The ones where you get a good thirty seconds into being awake before it really stops, and then it burns in your head for days after? It was one of them.

I was among friends. Don't know where. No faces, just noise. There was a gun and when I picked it up it had weight. Heft, that's the word.

Darkness. Wet. Pitch black but red.

False awakening, relief. Open door. Death everywhere. Gore splattered across walls I can't see. No relief, panic in fact, screaming bloody terror. Escape. Blue lights. Running.

Darkness. Wet. Sweat.

I wake up for real this time. I know it's real as I have the immediate urge to vomit. I cast around the bedside table for something to force the bile back down my throat.

There's half a beer, I neck it. This sudden ritual happens most days. Once downed a pint of off milk in my half awake fumblings. Threw up all over the cat. A warm beer is a good morning.

I stumble around the mess half naked, clutching a pouch of tobacco between my teeth.

Rizla,

Rizla,

Rizla.

Rizla. Tobacco, rizla, weed.

I sit in the middle of this fucking doss house smoking a joint  feeling too depressed to tidy. Fuck. I feel like crying.

Gyro came through yesterday. Bought bag of weed, value lager. £80 left. I gather my meagre belongings in a ripped backpack and put on yesterdays clothes. I'm gripped by sudden and crippling claustrophobia, the walls are closing in, ripped wallpaper and all. I have to get out now. Fuck the door. Nothing worth stealing. Name not on lease. The crack heads can have it.

The train station, get out of this suburb, fifteen quid one way. Done. Into London. Beating heart and all that. Glorious throbbing cancer of a city, good enough place to hide for a few. Maybe find a narrative and ride it out.

A kid shouts at me outside the station. I spit bloody murder at him, threaten to throw up on his shoes. He says I should be ashamed. If I weren't so tired I'd be angry.

I like sitting on trains. Above ground at any rate. They're warm,  so a good place for a kip if you have a ticket. Get a travel card and ride all day. They're fucking useless for getting somewhere though. Inside of London they'll trick you, force your brain into geographic torpor. They'll make you to ride for an hour rather than figure out a 15 minute walk. Don't want to walk anyway, you'll get mugged or raped or terrorized by people who haven't forgotten what zeal is. And if you do walk one must be suitably insulated. See it constantly, little devices allowing people to switch off or distract their senses, make them forget they live in the filth of the city.

I don't mind it.

One I day I hope to be the filth of the city.

A dirty little God.

Funny atheist you are.

The station is heaving. Suits and Kids and the Expensively Cheap and the Cheaply Expensive and fucking cozzers everywhere.

I have a deep genetic hatred of the police force, and not from the position of a drug user. Of course, if one of them tugs me I'll do my damnedest to run and I'll rail against the unfairness of the system and I'd rather eat the fucking stuff than have one of you CUNTS take it from me, but that's just background noise. The real thing that gets me is power. Their job, in the eyes of society, gives them power over me. Just thinking of it makes me sweat hate. The idea that someone would volunteer for such a position, let alone enjoy it is anathema to me. And they don't even need the law, just assumption.
They and those like them want a populace constantly expecting a swift kick to the face. People educated in learned helplessness. I fucking hate cozzers. 

Out of the station then, away from this herd and into another. My body warns me, we haven't eaten. Soon it will be too long and we wont be able to eat until after sleep. Even in the summer, even in a halfway comfortable coch, sleep on an empty stomach is a horrible thing.

Hunger is a bastard. There's no pain like it. At least with physical injuries or lack of sleep There's always the choice to just give up. Pass out, die, seek solace in cheap booze and drugs, but hunger will rip you apart. Sleep on an empty stomach and see if your dreams don't fuck with you. Body and mind colluding against me.

Now I am no tramp. I'm too smart and too pretty to be a tramp. A wanderer maybe, born too soon, designed for treks across post apocalyptic wastelands. Killing to eat and all that. But above all, tramps eat from bins. I do not eat from bins. Going through a bin outside the station is merely the first stage in my plan for lunch.

Discard newspapers and the (gross) remnants of food, look for receipts, receipts are solid gold. Interesting inventions, representing specific goods and the rights that go with them. Remember, rights are there to be taken be they yours or another's. This is a case of exploiting someone else's rights. See, if you buy something, even those items you cannot return such as “a delicious double cheeseburger” you have rights regarding it, in that you should get what you ordered. Every receipt from the glorious golden arches has the number of its specific temple scrawled across it. Public phone box, investment of precious change.

“Hello McDonald's, how may I help you?”

“Yeah! Hi there! I came in for lunch today, order a double cheeseburger with no gherkins. Takeaway! Imagine my disappointment when I found gherkins! And I had no time to return and exchange it, I Am A Busy Man After All.”

“I dreadfully sorry about that sir” (Don't call me sir, I fucking hate it. Spiteful language.) “We can provide you with a replacement sir, just pop along to the restaurant (HAH! RESTAURANT? FUCK OFF!) and we will replace it for you”

“Excellent! Many thanks! I will be down shortly!”

Job jobbed and a free lunch.

I scarf down the rotten thing. I have a method when it comes to selecting food for survival. In times past I loved food. The preparation, the eating, exotic flavours and combinations. Loved it. But recreational food is a pursuit that requires cash, and somewhere to cook. Nowadays I work on a weight versus price ratio. What the meal is matters not, I want the maximum amount of mass for the minimum spend. In these frugal days that's the only way to live.