A Collection of Dystopian Tales Read online

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  A couple of years back I had been sitting on my seat between the Undertakers and the Gazette when a local lad, known only as Street Boy, approached and asked if I minded sharing the seat. He reeked of vagrant. The tatty clothes smelt, the bitten nails bled and his mitts hadn’t seen soap in an age. He had a distinctive aroma and looked pale and malnourished, but he spoke with grace and courtesy. He didn’t beg and didn’t seem all that down on the world.

  And he had a nice brand of Slotvak vodka that he was happy to share. We watched the goings on, marveled at the ability of the vendors to make a sale, no matter how hard the citizens bartered. Rugs, cloth, spices were exchanged for large handfuls of shekels. But the boy was watching Sylvia’s Coffee House. And a girl. He liked my seat because it allowed him to watch the girl serving the coffees and cakes.

  It was late when we met the second time. Music played, the juggler had received a nasty cut to his leg from one of his blades. After the fire breathing incident a temporary ban had been placed on that part of his show. Sam, poor old Sam had been betrayed again by his damn snake. The boy, not more than twelve I was guessing needed to get a new snake. Or a new whistle. And maybe he could smarten up the tune he played to entice the snake to rise and sway. The girls of the seven veils, a serious dance troupe, had a good crowd and shekels were clinking in the seven hats at their feet.

  Street Boy was watching the Pittsville urchins robbing the tourists. He pointed to a little black kid winding up the army, taunting them with insults. Another child, still in nappies, cried in the dirt and received full attention from the street copper while the rest of the crew picked pockets at random. It was a well-rehearsed production of theft.

  I offered Street Boy a cigar and a tug on my flask, and he turned to me. ‘You write stories, eh?’ I nodded and didn’t correct him as I like to think of my pieces as articles of quality journalism. Not just stories.

  I got one about three prostitutes. Is that something you’d like to write about?’

  I shrugged as the town tended to pretend prostitution didn’t exist. But I liked this lad and wanted to hear his tale. I didn’t have anything better to do. The paper was printing and my day was done.

  It’s got romance in it too. And good defeats evil.’

  ‘Romance, is good,’ I say. My readers do like the romance. There’s not a lot of romance in the world, what with the Great Recession in its eight year. ‘Tell me more about the romance.’

  He looked to Sylvia’s Coffee Shop and smiled. It was a cold, seriously chilly morning with the previous night’s detritus littering …’

  Another boy who thought he was the one doing the writing. ‘Just the facts, please.’

  The Three Whores of Ostere

  Me, Cisely and Beatrice sat in the square sitting back, sort of basking in the year’s first hot sun. Across the town square vendors called their wares to the tourists. Street performers threw blades. Lithe bodies contorted and twisted while a lad attempted to coax a snake to sway. The scent of spices on charring beasts wafted on the late evening breeze. And beggars pleaded for a shekel for a life less fortunate.

  My attention centered on the lass clearing tables outside Sylvia’s Coffee House. She wore her hair thick and short and windswept. A black jumper hung low, with a pointed hood stretching long down her back.

  Beatrice dipped into my tobacco pouch and Cisely sucked at my vodka.

  ‘Good one Street Boy,’ Beatrice said. She had a nasal tone and a perpetual sneer. ‘Nice little business I had going until you intervened, like. Now I got Black Jack calling thinking I need to keep him supplied in cigars and purple hats. He be thinking it’s my job to fill that bloody guzzler he drives with high grade octane.’

  Beatrice wore joggers and a hoody, and kept her face dead pale. Cisely rugged up tight in a long zebra coat, and clutched a heavy bundle of emotional crap to her chest. She dropped her head on my shoulder, and offered a big old sigh.

  ‘Jesus Cisely,’ I say. ‘Why you go and sigh like that? So now I got to pretend I give a rat’s arse about your problems, eh? And here’s me thinking about making a move on the waitress serving the coffees.’

  The girls turned to look at the girl and then turned back to me. Their reaction was slow in coming. A giggle played for a while, but they looked at the girl and laughed out loud in my face.

  ‘You been looking for as long as we known you Street Boy. You isn’t never going to talk to that girl.

  I offered them a blank face, though my lips were pursed. I turned to Beatrice. ‘Don’t pay him,’ I said in answer to her problem.

  ‘You called Street Boy, right? Not Brainy Fucker.’

  Black Jack was a pig who thought he was big time. He wore this big old purple hat and had a gold tooth. He stood close on my six two but resembled an overfull dumpster. Black Jack had hands forged from metal alloy and he liked to punch and slap: Girls mainly. Rock hard granite shaped his square jaw and. he walked with a syncopated step, smoked fat cigars and bathed in cologne.

  And Black Jack was a white boy bred in the echelons of high Ostere society. He went to a Grammar School and had accountants for parents. But he did like to wear black. Black suits, black jackets and polished black jack boots.

  Cisely offers me a pout before guzzling at my vodka. ‘That Black Jack stands at Beatrice’s door knocking like he’s police. He’s already torched my Arabian tent. That was good that tent was. I had silk sashes over the bed. Colorful scented cushions and incense exotic in aroma. Men queued and paid in gold and wanted to spoon with Cisely for life in that tent. But you send me to Beatrice thinking that is cool. And it was. But now he’s pissed with my sister Beatrice, and that ain’t fair.’

  ‘Whores he calls us,’ Beatrice says. ‘Hey little whores. Let me in.’

  ‘He’s stinking the place up with his cheap cologne. ‘No,’ we say. No way No’ and he say he’s going to blow our bloody hut to hell.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Did he,’ the two girls say. Together they offer me a slap.

  ‘He drove that tank he calls his wheels through the hut, and over the hut,’ Beatrice said.

  ‘He then went and reversed,’ Cisely said. ‘Just in case he’d missed a wall or a trinket.’

  The two girls attacked my vodka, slopping the fluid down their chins. Beatrice spat onto the dirt and puffed on her thin roll up cigarette. Cisely cuddled close, and petted my arm. Folk offered us looks. Vendors gossiped and pointed at our seat. And families kept their children close as they passed us by.

  ‘So I’m back on the bloody streets, Street Boy,’ Cisely said. ‘My sister has lost her hut and Black Jack is dipping into our wealth to pay for the two lazy arsed tarts he escorts around town.’

  ‘And those cheap tarts,’ Beatrice said. She grabbed at my bottle of vodka and slurped loudly. ‘Have their mitts in his wallet playing with our cash.

  ‘And he has a new gold tooth.’

  I rescued my bottle of vodka and hid it within my backpack. I held their hands and offered them both a smile. ‘What you need is to go respectful, eh?’

  The two girls weren’t sure about respectful. I assured them I knew a girl, a good girl who could make their lives legitimate. Cisely scoffed and Beatrice shook her head. ‘This girl owns a big brick house in Lower Ostere,’ I said. ‘It has a white picket fence, trees and flowering shrubs. She has a receptionist and a greeter. And I’ve heard she’s looking for girls to help her expand. Yeah, what you girls need is to go respectful. That Black Jack don’t like respectful.’

  ***

  The sun sat low, the square rocked to cool tunes and the sweet smell of roasting lamb gnawed at my empty stomach. I pushed the hood off my head to peer at the man mountain looming above my seat.

  ‘You all right,’ I said. He didn’t answer. ‘Only you’re in my sunlight. It’s been a long cold winter and I wanted a browner shade of pale. I want to bask in the rays and heat the chill from my bones, eh?’

  I noticed he had two friends,
silent types, with shades and bulk to their bodies. They kept adjusting their shoulders and looking sort of furtive at the passing population. The three men work black, but the man blocking out my rays wore a big old purple hat, smoked a fat cigar and gold shone in his mouth.

  ‘You the creep been talking at my girls,’ he said. He talked street talk but there was a right posh twang to the timbre of his voice.

  ‘Hello Black Jack. You look well.’

  He didn’t look so well. The purple hat sat limp at the back of his balding head. The white cuffs peeping from his jacket looked frayed and a gold cuff link had gone AWOL.

  ‘I hear you preaching to my whores,’ he said. A golden cap was missing from his front tooth. ‘Giving them union like advice and telling them to say No to their Bad Man. Is that you?’

  We went for a walk up Church Lane. I breathed easy when we passed the graveyard. Over the years bodies had been known to take a dive into an open grave without the vicar’s permission. And we passed the church because preaching wasn’t on Black Jack’s mind. Ivan sat at the front table to the Old Poet Public House, but he was talking to his bottle of whisky and paying me no mind. We turned into a derelict Industrial Estate favored by squatters and illegals. It was a blind spot, so my beating went unnoticed. I landed two blows and offered the uglier creep a crippling front kick to the knee. But once I’d fallen they hoofed me all over the weed strewn site.

  ***

  A week later I’m basking, allowing the sun to heal the bruises to my face. A large take-out coffee topped with vodka warmed my hands. A shadow passed over me and I flinched. Cisely, Beatrice and Morticia, the third whore of Ostere, stood in the weak morning sun.

  ‘Hello ladies,’ I say. ‘What a pleasure to see you on this fine morning. Won’t you take a seat and get out of my sun so the rays can heal my wounds.’

  The vodka did a round while the ladies talked.

  ‘He’s still giving us grief, Street Boy,’ Cisely said.

  ‘He comes around all the time and he keeps asking to come inside,’ Beatrice said. ‘Three little whores,’ he says. ‘Three little whores, let me inside?’

  ‘And we say No, don’t we ladies?’ Cisely said. They nodded to the No. ‘But he don’t leave. He’s tried to break in, but our greeter battered him with a stick. He’s tried burning the house down, but it’s made of brick.’

  ‘He even tried to come down my chimney,’ Morticia said. ‘But we lit a fire and smoked him out.’

  ‘So he can’t get in. That’s good.’

  ‘We have no customers Street Boy,’ Beatrice said. ‘He’s scaring everyone off.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ***

  Tyson sat on my seat with his hood shrouding his face. ‘Why you sit here?’ he said.

  The girl from Sylvia’s Coffee Shop left with her coat buttoned tight to her neck. Wooly mittens held a coffee and a striped tea cozy sat on her head. She stepped around the roasting pig, smiling at P-P-Porky Pete basting the rotating rump.

  ‘So we like her, huh?’

  ‘She thinks I’m a tramp.’

  ‘You’re worse than a tramp. You covered in bruises and you don’t beg so you’re a penniless tramp. That’s worse. You got no money so you can’t talk to the girl.’

  Tyson pulled his jacket tight and blew on his hands. ‘So what you want with me?’

  ‘I have a couple of ladies getting grief from a man called Black Jack. The man is an arse.’

  ‘I heard you took a beating.’

  ‘Now and then you got to take one for the team, but he’s out of hand. I was wondering if you and your Punkster gang could help with the talk me and Black Jack got to have.’

  ‘We good at talking,’ Tyson said. ‘Maybe he has some money he wants to give us. If we going to be talking, then we should be recompensed.’

  And I nodded. ‘I reckon you’re right about that.’

  ***

  Black Jack lived in a nice house in Old Ostere where all the rich criminals liked to hide. Tyson turned up with two Punksters for back up, but Black Jack wasn’t answering his door. Tyson fed his little brother through the cat hatch to unlock the door, and we headed for the sound of a television. A curry aroma mixed with a sour scent of decay and stale cigarettes tainted the humid climate.

  ‘This don’t make sense,’ I said. ‘He walks around like he’s king. He threatens and boasts and smells like he bathes in perfume. This is Pittsville Poor.’

  We found Black Jack sitting in his singlet and shorts on a sagging sofa. Against the wall a television played a screen of loud fuzzy static. An ashtray overflowed with dead butts. Soup and beer cans littered the tatty carpet. A rancid odor hummed from his sorry arse. I kicked at his leg, wondering how long he’d been sitting watching nothing.

  ‘This isn’t nice,’ I said.

  Tyson picked up a needle sitting scrunched against Black Jack’s arm and held it up for me to see. I turned his arm and revealed a mass of festering sores.

  Tyson dropped the needle in his lap. ‘Let’s trash this place.’

  I found a gun with two spare magazines. Tyson located a stash of cash in the sofa cushions once he dumped Black Jack on the floor. His brother found a cupboard of prescription drugs. As we loaded our booty Black Jack’s two buffoons approached the front door. We hid within the first room, waiting for the two men to pass, and followed them into the lounge.

  ‘You stick with the gun, but I have a favor to return to these two gentlemen.’

  Tyson grabbed a bat from his brother and handed me the weapon. ‘Aim high or aim low, but swing hard. I shoot the fucker if you get a kicking.’

  I didn’t get a kicking. I took the uglier buffoon from behind, taking his intercostal bones to the park with my home run hitting. His tall mate I jabbed in the face with the rounded end of the bat, splattered his nose and took his knees with two low drives.

  Tyson and his brother jumped into the fray, hooting and stomping to a sad tune playing on the television. I left with a wad of cash and job satisfaction overflowing with my righteous actions.

  ***

  The sun shone, but the breeze had a cold bite, the sour odor of the River Ost tainting the day. I’d selected a seat out front of the Drunken Duck and waited with a bottle of wine chilling in a bucket. Cisely had taken me shopping, and I looked damn sharp in a black jacket and baggy black trousers. Beatrice had washed and trimmed the mop on my head and a posy of flowers sat on the table opposite my seat.

  My nerves, crap on a good day coz I don’t eat so well, had me sweating bad. My hands shook, and I wanted a drink. Cisely said no drink, so I sat and read the wine label and played with the glasses.

  When Beatrice and Morticia exited Sylvia’s Coffee House my hands jumped and trembled. The girl walked between them. She wore loose black trousers and a long earthen jumper with a hood hanging way down her back. Her thick curls looked disheveled and her olive skin bore no makeup. The girls weren’t forcing her, but no one talked as they approached the Drunken Duck.

  I pulled my hands out and clasped them before me, and straightened my back. My mouth salivated, the need for the drink great, but Cisely said she’d castrate me if I touched the bottle.

  Beatrice called out. ‘Street Boy.’

  ‘What.’ I thought her tone a little aggressive, and her voice way too loud.

  ‘I got something for you.’

  The three girls stepped up to my table and Beatrice threw a wad of cash. I caught the heavy bundle with both hands.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That’s cash.’

  ‘But why you playing catch with cash?’ I looked about the square conscious of the cameras and the patrolling army.

  ‘You the Man now. We always have to pay the Man.’

  I stood up as I felt silly sitting before the three women. I picked up the wad of cash and handed it to Beatrice and smiled at the girl. I reached out to offer my hand. ‘Me names Ben. And these ladies have other places to be.’

  I pulled
out a chair and me and the girl sat down. As I poured the wine I smiled at Beatrice and Morticia watching me from the seat across the square. I pulled at my cuff so the girl could see my new cufflinks. I lit my fat cigar and smiled at the girl.

  ‘And I’m not the Man.’

  // // //

  I don’t like to offer spoilers, but that relationship didn’t turn out well. The young girl was looking for love in the form of a man with a job, and a roof over his head. Street Boy owned the new threads he wore on that date and a whole life’s worth of unsavory baggage, but little else. He also had issues with the Law and the army. Trouble hounded his arse daily.

  I’d been working hard trying to get an article of child slavery onto the front page of the Ostere Gazette. My brother, the owner of Ostere Gazette, had been pushing me to tie the article in with a van load of dead kids found in the Lowlands a week back. I was sitting on the seat outside our offices, the square closed for the Sunday, but a small church group singing and praying on the steps surrounding the town hall. I don’t know who they were praying for, because the square was empty. The screen showed images of sporting conquests with the occasional missive from the Man to inspire his citizens.

  I’d been dozing to the sound of the press churning through the stone wall behind me. It was a pleasant night, balmy for early autumn and I had a gut full of whisky encouraging my slumber. It took me an age to realize I had company.

  A child sat at the end of the seat, his feet kicking at the dirt beneath the warped wooden struts. When he saw me stirring he pulled his legs up and sat cross legged facing me. ‘Are you Eddie?’ he asked. He was young, his voice high pitched. ‘Eddie the Editor?’ I nodded. ‘And you pay for a good story.’

  ‘If I can use it.’

  ‘You can use it, for sure.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘It’s about my mate Hector and his sister and this evil bitch who tried to move in on their dad. Aunty Matilda.’

  He pulled out a flattened butt and tried to light it without burning his nose. Smoke invaded his eyes and he screwed them tight as he coughed hard and threw the butt away. ‘I got to give up the fags.’

  Eddie smiled at the boy and took a puff on his cigar. ‘You got time,’ he said.