3:AM Magazine

By Giles Ruffer.

Torrents gush out of the bath tap, threatening to break the meniscus of the tub and spill onto the floor. Beside the bath a flabby man with pasty white skin sits naked on a toilet leafing through a book. The pages are becoming more and more flimsy in his fleshy hands as the room fills with steam. The book has a dust jacket despite it being a paperback and on the dust jacket is the title of the book, written in Chinese characters. We can assume that the contents are written in Chinese too and only need to look at the expression of the overweight man to realise we are right: he doesn’t understand a word, but flicks through the pages with slight curiosity anyway. He puts the book on the floor next to the toilet brush before taking some toilet paper and wiping himself, turning off the taps to the bath and flushing the toilet. The water in the toilet splutters as it spins round and eats its own tail.

The man steps feet first into the bath and stays standing up for a while. Water breaks over the sides and onto the linoleum floor. His calves begin to adjust to the temperature, prickling against his skin. At the side of the bath is a frosted window and on the windowsill sits a portable radio. The overweight man turns it on and turns through the fog of frequencies until the aerial manages to reach over the channel, like a glass pressed against a neighbouring wall. There’s a short conversation in French between a man and a woman, then foreign pop music starts playing. The overweight man puts the radio back on the windowsill and eases himself down into the bath. The overweight mans name is Michael. Neither the radio nor the flat belong to Michael, but he acts like they do.

The flat is situated above a small arcade of village shops, with one smaller flat beside it. Outside, a postman walks up the metal railings at the back of the shops that lead to the two flats. A man in his mid twenties with long greasy hair is watching the postman from the ground while smoking a cigarette, standing in the doorway to an off-licence’s storeroom. An electronic blee-bloo goes off in the background and the greasy haired man grinds the cigarette into the concrete with his foot before disappearing into the storeroom. Next to the off-licence is ‘Chung’s Fish & Chips,’ but as the note taped to the front door will tell you, the Chung’s are in Hong Kong celebrating Chinese New Year and they won’t be open for another two weeks. The year before they had celebrated it in the forecourt behind the shops and flats. Eric Chung set off large fireworks that screamed and exploded while his two children, Kevin and Iris, chased each other and ran around the block with lanterns. Michael had watched this from the window of his flat next-door.

Eric Chung was also Michael’s landlord. They were on friendly terms with each other and Eric did not mind giving his tenant a free portion of battered sausage and chips when he handed over his cheque for that months rent. However this did not stop Eric Chung from complaining to his wife loudly, in Cantonese, at how fat their tenant was. Michael, not understanding what it was that was being said, just assumed that Eric Chung was permanently disgruntled with his wife.

The Chung’s left Michael a spare key when they went to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year, asking him to feed their tropical fish while they were away. Forgetting to ask how often he should feed them, Michael started letting himself into the house everyday in order to check on the fish. At first, it was this genuine worry that he might accidentally kill his landlord’s fish, but gradually he started to make more use of his access to the Chung’s flat. Michael found himself opening his neighbour’s door after getting home from work, making his way to the sofa and turning on the TV. The Chung’s had Sky!

After a few days, during commercials, temptation overcame Michael. He started to look in their bedrooms. The two children shared a bedroom, with a bunk bed taking up most of the floor space, the rest being covered with toys. A giant scroll poster of some cartoon that Michael had never heard of was on the wall opposite the bunk bed. It was an average kids room and there was really nothing about it that interested him. Their parent’s bedroom on the other hand was spotless. Michael found this far more intriguing. On each side of the king-size bed that, again, took up most of the floor space, were bedside tables - three drawers in each. Michael tried to guess which side belonged to husband or wife. He first looked through the drawers in the table on the left side of the bed, deciding it was Eric Chung’s. He expected (and hoped) to find a few porn magazines or maybe pictures of his wife naked, but didn’t. Instead, he found a large hunting knife in his bottom drawer, underneath a pile of bedclothes. Michael sat on the floor for a while examining the knife and thinking about why Eric Chung not only owned it, but chose to keep it in his bedside drawer. He put the knife back where he found it before lunging, belly first, across the bed to look in Mrs Chung’s drawer. She was a timid woman, but for some reason Michael was not at all surprised when he found a vibrator in the second drawer down, next to a book. It was the first vibrator Michael had ever seen in real life and was slightly disappointed by the size – it must have only been about six inches. He turned it on and off. He smelt it – it did not smell of anything. He put it back and went to the toilet before going back to his own flat, feeling slightly disgusted with himself.

Back in his own flat Michael stood under the stream of water in his mildew plagued shower cubicle. He looked up at the ceiling and decided tomorrow he would take a bath at the Chung’s.
Michael watched his portable TV as he lay in bed. Outside he could hear drunken teenagers kicking lampposts. A light behind the curtain would flicker and go out before coming back on a minute or so later. He remembered it was Saturday; he didn’t have work tomorrow.

The next day he took a second look in Mrs Chung’s drawer. The vibrator was still there. He took out the book that lay next to it, went to the bathroom and started running the bath.

The tiles in the bathroom are two different shades of blue with some white ones dotted around. Michael looks through the steam, to see if there is any sort of identifiable pattern that he can decipher. In the hallway, letters drop onto the door mat. There are already several other letters that Michael has let pile up. He takes his time relaxing in the bath, listening to mumbled mix of French radio and static. Michael’s mind drifts off into a sequence of slicing fish heads and serving customers he hates. Although he is now manager of the Sainsbury’s fish counter, the smell of fish seems to have been absorbed by his body like a sponge. He gets the odd whiff of bass when he least expects it. He thinks about his ex-girlfriend making fun of him for it – fish-boy, she called him. He thinks about her walking around his flat, wearing his checked shirts. He thinks about coming back to the flat and finding a letter on his bed. He thinks about his stomach turning as he read it and re-reads it in his mind, leaving a bitter aftertaste. He smells underneath his armpits to see if they smell of fish, but he can’t smell anything. Michael suspects he has become desensitised to the smell.

He wraps himself in a silk bathrobe that was hanging on the back of the bathroom door and ties a towel around his thinning black hair. Sitting on the edge of the bed in Eric Chung’s bedroom, he presses a big green button on the phone base that sits on Eric Chung’s bedside table. A stream of syllables that have no running connection for Michael come from the loudspeaker. After they finish, Michael deletes them all. He remembers spotting a cigarette packet in Eric Chung’s second drawer yesterday and opens the drawer to see if they are still there. They are, but the packet is empty. It must have been empty yesterday too. An old Zippo lighter is at the back of the drawer. Michael fumbles with it in his chubby fingers, but there is no light.

Michael had given up smoking when he and his ex-girlfriend had started going out. He hadn’t started again since she left him. Michael was eight years old when he smoked his first cigarette. He and two friends from Cub Scouts, Daniel and Rob, had started playing in the woods near Michael’s house. It was agreed that Michael would bring toothpaste, Rob would bring deodorant and Daniel would bring his brother’s cigarettes and matches.

“My Mum does breath tests before dinner every day,” Daniel boasted. Everyone knew Daniel smoked. Even the teachers at school.

“I bet you both choke!” he continued. It seemed to Michael that everything he had learnt recently had come from Daniel, and not from parents, teachers or Cub Scout leaders. Daniel had shown him how to clench his keys between his knuckles in case anyone ever tried to pick a fight on him. It seemed like a brutal and genius idea. So of course Michael wanted to start smoking too, despite suffering from asthma.

Daniel took the can of deodorant and lit a match. He sprayed the can of deodorant over it and laughed at his makeshift flame-thrower.

Through the woods near Michael’s house ran a public path, but the boys would often run into the mess of trees that surrounded the path and fight their way through the brambles until they came to a secluded clearing. These kinds of places are well known about, but you will rarely see anyone there. The only evidence of other people being there are the things they leave behind. Treasures to eight-year-old boys.

“Why would anyone throw this away!?” shouted Rob at the top of his voice, holding up the tattered, rained on pages of page three models. Near-by were the remains of a fire, probably a few days old. Michael kicked over a small log that was lying on the floor, exposing insects wriggling about. Daniel took a long drag of the cigarette and made his mouth into an O shape before exhaling.

“Sometimes I can do smoke rings. Not today though,” he passed the cigarette to Michael. The sound of footsteps and then a cry came through the trees and brambles.

“Quick,” said Daniel, snatching the cigarette from Michael and stamping it out on the ground.

“Hannah!” It was Michael’s next-door neighbour. He father had died early that year, of cancer, but she had turned all her preoccupations to following Michael wherever he went.

“What are you doing?” she asked, approaching them.

“Nothing.”

“It smells like smoke. Have you been smoking?”

“Why the fuck do you care?” asked Daniel. He knew girls like Hannah hated it when people swore and liked to do it in front of them as much as he could. Hannah looked genuinely insulted and on the verge of tears. She sniffed.

“You know it gives you cancer?”

This made Daniel smile, but Michael was feeling more and more embarrassed for his neighbour. He looked at her, appalled. She was wearing black tracksuit bottoms with a black ‘Fat Willy’s Surf Shack’ T-Shirt.

“Why’re you dressed all in black anyway?” said Michael. “You going to another funeral?” he laughed, but soon stopped when he realised that Daniel and Rob weren’t. Tears were rolling down the horror stricken face of the small girl in front of him. She turned away and ran back into the trees and brambles.

Michael had a lot to answer for when he got home. Hannah had told her mother everything, who had then told Michael’s mother, who had then grounded Michael. Hannah forgave him eventually and one summer holiday afternoon, when they were eleven years old, they had given each other their first kiss. But Michael’s parents took him out of Cub Scouts and he did not see Daniel or Rob until secondary school. Even then they rarely spoke to each other. They were different people with different interests.

The metal staircase creaks as Michael makes his way down to the forecourt and round to the front of the off-licence. The door greets him with a blee-bloo as he walks into the empty shop. Behind the counter are stacks of cigarettes and Michael finds himself struck with indecision, but it seemed like he could take his time deciding as no one had come to serve him. He went to the door and held it open for a couple of seconds before closing it again.

Blee-bloo. Blee-bloo. He was just about to open the door again when the man with long greasy hair comes out from a door at the back of the shop. He is only slightly younger than Michael but retains an essence of adolescence through his underdeveloped rake-like body, long, straggly hair and thin, furry moustache. Michael gives the man his choice and looks through his wallet for his money. For a moment Michael considers his ID. It has clearly been a while since he has bought any cigarettes. He sniggers out loud and the straggly man looks at him quizzically. Michael apologises without explaining himself and leaves the shop.

Lighting up, Michael stands outside, opposite a vacant phone box, smoking. In the distance, a girl is walking towards him. She has tanned skin with big brown eyes and tied back hair and is talking loudly on her phone. In the distance, Michael wants to talk to her, take her out to dinner. In the distance, Michael wants to take her to bed. But the closer she gets the more visible her flaws become, as if a fog is lifting right in front of him. Now she is close enough for Michael to hear every word she is saying on the phone but Michael can only look at her forehead. It I thick and shiny, like varnished mahogany. Michael has the mental image of taking a saw to it just to see the wood shavings fly off. She passes him and his eyes follow. She stops at the locked door to ‘Chung’s Fish & Chips’ and reads the notice on the door. Michael finishes his cigarette and thinks about lighting another.

“It’s fucking shut!” the girl tells her phone. “Fuck sake! Okay, I’ll see you in a bit.” She closes her phone and puts it in the pocket of her jeans.

Michael is starring off into the distance, smoking his second cigarette, as the girl walks up to him.

“Hi, ‘scuse me, you couldn’t lend us a fag could you?” Michael looks at her, looks at her forehead and is once again filled with the same thoughts of taking a saw to it.

“This is my last one, sorry.” She looks up at him for a second, and then looks at him. At how wide he is. It is true that Michael is a very overweight man, but he’s not just overweight. He is round, and this makes his belt look like an equator on him. It takes her a few seconds to fully take him in before she takes her turn to reply.

“Fuck off! I just saw you take that one out, you got a full packet!”

“Sorry,” Michael says, before taking a long drag on his cigarette and flicking it to the ground. It rolls for a bit and lays there still burning, half finished. They have both followed the cigarettes trajectory and are now looking at it. Michael turns and walks away.

“Oh yeah, walk away. You fat cunt. You ugly wanker. Are you why the chip shop’s closed? Because you ate everything?” The insults seem to continue but diminish in volume in Michael’s ears. He walks back up to the Chung’s flat where he goes to Eric Chung’s bedside drawers and takes out the hunting knife from the second drawer down. He examines it for a while and thinks about making a cut along the belly of a fish. Then thinks about making the same cut along his forearm. He makes several fake strokes, like a golfer swinging his club before he steps up to the ball. He thinks about the Chung’s coming home from Chinese New Year and finding him in their bedroom, surrounded by an island of his own blood. He feels sorry for Mrs Chung and imagines Eric Chung shouting at her as if it was her fault. He puts the knife in his pocket and leaves the room.

It turns midnight as Michael sits on the end of his bed, naked. It is the Year of the Ox. He is reading a letter from an envelope addressed to him. The hunting knife sleeps beside him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Giles Ruffer was born in London but now lives in Brighton, via Leeds. He has written and drawn several self-published comics as well as contributing to various anthologies. In 2008 he took part in the writing course So, you want to be a Writer? at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, during which he wrote the short play Waiting. Since then he has focused mainly on writing short fiction.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Thursday, March 26th, 2009.