Bringing the cigarette back to my lips, I relive its creation, packaging, being stacked in the corner store, sold, unpacked, rolled, ignited. I know that life story as well as I do my own, and find a smile on my lips, a small modicum of appreciation. I could have it worse—if my sensitivity didn’t stop with touch. A taste sensitive would have to suffer the complete memories of every drop of water in the cup, every bean ground. They’d probably remember the growth, harvest, preparation, and packing of every single leaf of tobacco. Their lives must be hell.
I read that they feed themselves intravenously, try and avoid using their mouths as much as possible. There was one in the news, maybe three years back, who sewed her lips shut so she wouldn’t accidentally swallow a fly or inhale dust floating on a breeze. The things we do to try and be normal . . .
Maybe I’m remembering that wrong—it seems too theatrical. Maybe she just superglued her lips shut. That’s how I’d do it. Sewing flesh is harder than you’d think. You need a good needle. Wish I didn’t know that from personal experience.
A car pulls up, and I drop the cigarette butt in what’s left of the coffee, throw it in a wheely bin before walking over to the vehicle. The husband’s in the driver’s seat. No wonder it took her twice as long as it should have to get over here.
“I’m coming with you,” he says, as he battles with his seat belt and gets out, slamming the door aggressively.
That kind of anger could get his girl killed.
“Bad idea,” I say, eyeing his wife, who looks away. She wants no part of this conversation. “These people aren’t going to like me turning up, let alone you.” I’m trying to be diplomatic. I’m not good at diplomacy. “Don’t want to spook them any more than we have to. I’ll be in and out, as little contact as possible. You’re emotional—”
“Damn right I’m emotional!” he grunts. He’s angry. At me, but also at himself. Definitely blames himself. Thinks he should have seen this coming, like you can see anything like this coming . . .
“Emotion is only going to risk your daughter’s safety,” I say. “This needs to be a quick negotiation, hand the cash over, and get out with your girl. You have to let me do this alone.”
He stares me down, then huffs and throws an envelope across the roof of the car. Even now, he doesn’t want to get too close to me. Part of me wants to take a glove off and plant a hand on him. Screw the pain and seizure, forget the girl and her rescue. When someone is this much of an arsehole, when they’re hiding something so obviously, I just want to know. Like the ex you stalk on Facebook, there’s an easy way to find out what’s going on. But I don’t take my glove off. I won’t.
The first rule I set myself when I discovered my sensitivity—after I picked up the pieces of my life—was to never read someone without a good reason. Preferably with their permission. He had no part in his daughter’s disappearance, that’s clear from the evidence. He’s just a paranoid piece of shit. Worst he’s done is cheat on his wife and steal office supplies.
I grab the envelope and walk up the street, taking a right onto the dealer’s road. I can hear their car. They’re following me. I glance back over my shoulder and give them a knowing look. The father at the wheel, edging along behind me. His wife is in the passenger seat, looking away, still wanting no part of it. I sigh, turn on my heels, and pull off a glove as I walk over to their car. His eyes open wide as I approach, he reaches for the lock. I wrench the door open with my gloved hand before it clicks shut. I hold my bare hand in the air in front of him, wave my fingers, and bring them towards him.
“What are you doing?!” he squeals.
“You’re following me,” I say, narrowing my eyes, reaching deeper into the car. “You’re jittery. You were almost catatonic, and now you’re ablaze with emotion.” He’s pulling back, trying to get out of his chair, over to the passenger side, clambering over his wife whilst the seat belt constrains him from getting too far. “You’re hiding something, and I’m going to find out what.” My fingers are millimetres from his skin. He’s sweating, nervous, terrified of what I might find.
“I’ll stop! I won’t follow you!” he begs, whimpers, almost in tears.
I stop encroaching on his personal space, freeze in midair, study his face. He’s telling the truth. He cares more about his secrets than he does about punching some junkie shitbag.
“Okay,” I say, pulling my hand back, replacing the glove. I turn back towards the street, move closer to the house from the dealer’s memories. The car’s engine purrs in the background.
Peering back over my shoulder, I see they haven’t moved. The husband’s watching me, refusing to blink, whilst his wife fires questions at him. She’s finally caught my curiosity, noticed how freaked out he is by me. Most don’t. Maybe they don’t want to. Sometimes it takes your overweight, fifty-something husband clambering on top of you to escape the touch of a guy who can know all his secrets to make you question whether they’ve always been honest with you. She seems too proud to hire me for that, though. Couples therapy, counselling, that’s how they’ll attempt to fix their marriage. He’ll lie through his teeth, no doubt, but it’ll be cathartic. For her, at least.
Coming over a crossing, I see the house just up ahead. Another Georgian terrace that’s seen better days. Rusting, four-foot-tall fences enclose the house like it’s a giant, retarded animal in a shit zoo. There’s fifteen square foot of garden locked in there with it that was once probably beautiful. Now you can’t see the grass for the cigarette butts and roaches, stolen traffic cones, and shopping trolleys. What the hell do people steal trolleys for? A gnarled, anorexic tree stands at the centre of the garden, all angles and knots, branches shed of their leaves, looking sickly and bald. Looks like it died a while back and is waiting for someone to notice.
Two doors sit side by side, separated by a fence branching out from the enclosure. Each with a gate leading up to them. Blue door to the left, red to the right. Would old-school, anaglyph 3-D glasses only see one door? That’d make for a good sci-fi movie: two doors seen by normal folk, leading to normal houses, only one door visible to someone with the red/blue glasses, going to somewhere fantastical. I search the dealer’s memories. Blue door. And it leads to the diametric opposite of fantastical.
I hit the buzzer. One short press, then one long, two short. They have a code to get in. It’s as adorable as it is idiotic. The buzzer squeals angrily with each press, a mechanical “Ow!,” like I’m flicking it in the balls. Now to wait. Junkie time. It usually takes them anything from two to five minutes to answer.
Every second they make me wait is one second longer that they’ll be doing something awful to her. But this, like so many things, is out of my hands. They have all the power here—for now, at least.
5
They finally buzz me in, and I make my way up to their flat. They’re on the top floor, three flights up, no elevator. The stairs smell like stale piss and beer. They’re tiled, stained with boot prints and blotches of fluids. A wad of fresh phlegm hangs from the bannister on the second floor, loose spit making snail trails down the wall beneath it. A den of shitbags and wannabe villains.
Once I’m out with the girl I’ll call this place in too, tip the cops, get these disgusting bastards off the street—along with the dealer who brought her here. Traded her like fucking cattle. I used to think that kind of thing only happened to Asian or Russian mail-order brides, Moldovan or Ukrainian women thinking they were going to the UK to be models. Maybe that’s all changed since I forced myself to stop reading the Daily Mail. People now used as human Bitcoin, drugs replacing mining, their value fluctuating depending on how useful or pretty they are.
There was a time when I wanted to see how beautiful the world was, go to India or Machu Picchu. Now all I see is these dark recesses of the human stain. Parasites and demons propagating in the shadows.
At the door to the apartment it’s the same code again; a quick knock, a harder knock and a pause, then two quick knocks in succession. The lat
ch clicks twice as it’s turned, sending a shiver down my spine, reminding me of the sound of shotguns being cocked in 1980s action movies. But that’s not my memory—that’s his, the dealer’s. Every time he comes here, he mimes cocking a shotgun as they unlock the door. What an absolute prick.
The door opens a crack, revealing dull eyes forked with red veins. They’re trying their hardest to focus and recognise me from under thin, greasy strands of hair. “Who are you?” mumble the scabby lips that lie beneath the strained gaze.
“Friend of Lisa’s,” I say. “Here to pay the vig.”
He looks confused. I thought “vig” was a common expression with the criminal element for a debt owed. Obviously not. Or, more likely, this guy is just a moron whose brain has been reduced a thick, drug-addled stew.
“For her freedom,” I explain. “Got what’s owed.”
I show him the envelope, lifting the lip for him to see the cash. His eyes widen, mouth too, revealing far too many teeth absent and the scent of rot on his breath. He pulls the door open for me to enter, straight into the living room. It’s exactly what I would have pictured, even if I didn’t have the dealer’s memories floating amongst my own. More clichés of dilapidation and lack of care. Wallpaper peeling and damp rising. A smell in the air of sweat and mould, mingling with smoke and weed. I worry I’ll never get the stink out of my clothes. He closes the door behind me and I hold back, observing the other guys in the room. Two more, just as fucked up as the idiot at the door. Their faces are all angles, sunken cheeks, and hollow eyes. Pale, spotty, greasy. These fucks need to be sat in the sun and given a box of oranges to suck on. That’s all they’d probably be able to do with oranges; I’ve got as many teeth in my mouth as they have between the three of them, and they probably don’t have the structural integrity to bite into a marshmallow. They’re sitting on shitty couches pockmarked with cigarette burns. Overflowing ashtrays and cans of Coke that have become ashtrays sit on a coffee table in front of them—a coffee table in name only, as it’s probably never seen a real cup of coffee. Maybe instant, but fuck instant.
They outnumber me, sure, but an unsettling confidence, cockiness, tells me I can take them. I wonder if that’s mine or the dealer’s. Personality traits merge like that sometimes, temporarily. But I’m not here to fight.
“Haven’t got all day, guys,” I say, sternly. “Got your money. Where’s the girl?”
They look at one another, then the one who answered the door heads over to another room, a bedroom, and knocks.
“Fuck off!” shouts a man inside. His breath is heavy, he’s exerting himself. That sends a chill up my spine. I know exactly what’s happening behind that door.
Pushing past the idiot at the bedroom door, I barge it open with my shoulder. The bedroom is thick with the stench of damp. Mould crawling halfway up the walls. It’s also marked out territory on the carpet, encroaching on the filthy bed at the centre, creating a fungal moat. Another piece-of-shit junkie is standing over the bed, his pants round his ankles, thrusting away with guttural gasps and grunts. The girl is on her back. She isn’t moving, apart from when he pounds at her.
“You’ll get your go!” he shouts, not even turning at the interruption.
This has to stop. Now. I grab the back of his shirt and pull him away from her. He trips over the trousers round his feet and falls back to the floor. Eyes blank, crazy, confused. He tries to form words with his dry, scabby lips, but I don’t think he’s worked out what’s happened yet. He’s looking around at the bed, the girl, me, the floor below him. His shrivelled, soft cock looks as confused as he does, nestled in a thicket of pubic hair. That’s a little good news for when she comes to. At least she won’t wake up with junkie spunk dripping out of her. He couldn’t get it up, was either imagining that he had the capacity to get hard or just putting on a show for the others.
“Payment in full,” I say, throwing the envelope at him. It hits him hard in the chest and bounces into his lap. The cash spills out, protecting what little modesty he has left.
Leaning over to the girl, I pull her panties up and her skirt back down. “Lisa?”
No response. She’s breathing, but out of it. Fucked up on whatever they dosed her with. I check my gloves are secure, then kneel down and put a hand under her knees, the other under her back, lift her from the semen-encrusted sheets, take her to the door.
“Hey!” says the shitbag on the floor. “You can’t do that!” he tries to get to his feet.
“You’ve got your money,” I say, nodding to the envelope, the notes fanned out across his crotch and carpet. “You’re done with her.”
Leaving the bedroom, I carry her to the door, the other three junkies watching me passively, like it’s a damn soap opera.
“Little help?” I say to the idiot from the door, who looks at me with a confounded expression, then reaches for the girl as if I’m giving her back to him. “Door!” I grunt. She’s heavier than she looks. Or I’m more out of shape than I think I am.
I get halfway down the stairs before I start to struggle. I have to hold her at an awkward angle. Supporting her legs, which I can have closer to me, but also her upper body, which I have to hold downwards and away. Can’t let her head get too close, in case her hair brushes my cheek and we both take a tumble down the stairs.
Close to the ground floor, I lay her down on the step, take a moment to recover, catch my breath. A moment to curse myself for smoking, for drinking so much, for not working out more, whilst also thinking about how I really need a smoke and a drink.
A few minutes later, I’m carrying her out of the door, down the path. The parents’ car is parked up outside, even though I told them to hold back. But in all honesty, I’m glad I don’t have to carry her much farther. The father runs up, through the gate, grabs his daughter from me. He’s truly relieved to have her back, doesn’t even seem to be worried about getting too close in the process. His wife joins him, and together they help her into the back seat. Real relief. He genuinely seems happy to have his family back together. That doesn’t seem like that reaction of a man who’s cheating, or lying, or worse. I could have just been projecting, seeing or assuming the worst. Or maybe, since discovering my sensitivity, I’ve yet to find someone who doesn’t have something shitty to hide.
I watch them drive off, the girl still unconscious in the backseat, her mother sitting with her, propping her upright, keeping an eye on her breathing. The family is back together, their little girl safe. But how long will it last . . . ? How long before she has a drink, has a spliff, thinks about getting high more often, ends up back on the pills, getting pulled back in with the wrong crowd? As much as I’d like to believe this is where their nightmare ends, I can’t help feel like it’s going to start all over again somewhere down the line.
This kind of cheery disposition is probably why I’m not invited to parties much . . .
*
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