Chapter 4 The Big Bad Love Machine

45.

Bill scooped up a stack of polaroids, and forced them into a sandwich bag, which was then punched into his pocket.

He met up with his friend outside his house did the secret handshake, and started skating into the city. They sent the skateboards grinding down a set of rails down a staircase. That was the peak of the entire trip. There wasn’t a lot of parkour maneuvers they could pull on the way to the dealer. Otherwise they just kept  to the pavement with their hands in their pockets.

They stopped outside the alley, Bill picked up his board.

‘Hey, do you ever miss kicking the board into motion?’ asked the friend.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like… the skateboards motorized, and I’m going faster than ever before, but… I don’t know, it’s just not the same. You ever miss that?’

‘Not really.’ Said Bill.

They entered the brick corridor, and Bill knocked on the wooden shutters.

It swung open, revealing a neckbearded, asthmatic dork, that looked like six feet of spilled lard.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said stopping to puff on his inhaler. ‘If it’s not Bill and his shitty excuse for a sidekick.’

‘Go fuck yourself.’ Said the friend.

‘I would go fuck myself but my dick is too big.’ Said the asthmatic with a shit eating grin.

‘You haven’t seen your dick in three years.’ Said the sidekick. ‘It gets shorter every time you piss me off.’

‘Hey could you shut up please,’ said Bill to his friend. ‘We’re all friends remember.’  

The friend scratched his neck. ‘Sorry.’

‘Thank you.’ Said the asthmatic to Bill. ‘You got the goods?’

‘Depends,’ said Bill. ‘You got the weed?’

The asthmatic pulled out a bag of grass. ‘May I inspect, the, uh, merchandise?’

Bill fanned out the photographs on the counter. All of women getting changed through windows.

‘Good.’ Said the asthmatic. He scooped them up, and gazed at them one at a time running his fingers down the surface. ‘There’s no cute ones.’ He said.

‘There never is.’ Said Bill.

The asthmatic started coughing and had to catch the plague spraying out his throat with a hankie. Before he again took a second puff on his inhaler. ‘Sorry about that.’ He panted. ‘It happens when I get excited.’

‘It’s okay…’ said Bill, eyeing the weed. ‘Can I-‘

‘Of course, of course.’ Said the dealer, he handed over the grass. ‘A pleasure doing business with you as always.’ He smiled, showing his pink braces, while looking sideways at the sidekick.

‘And you.’ Said Bill.

The window shut.

Bill and Bill’s friend walked out the alley.

‘Fucking hate that guy.’ Said the friend.

‘He gives us weed for practically free though.’

‘Man, I’d rather pay than speak to that disgusting fuck.’ He looked over his shoulder and flipped the bird at the window.

‘Still, wanna smoke this at the park?’ said Bill.

‘Fine.’ He said rubbing the back of his neck. ‘It’s not like we need to be at school or anything.’ 

46.

Victoria woke up in the night. No reason, no wake up call, no roosters crowing, no creaking floor boards, no popping warheads; her brain had simply decided that three hours was enough sleep and that was it.

She rocked out of bed, fitted her oversized feet in undersized bunny slippers, burrito-wrapped herself in a fluffy pink dressing gown and proceeded out of her bedroom.

The staircase creaked and groaned and begged for death beneath her footsteps.

Kitchen.

Set the kettle cooking. No time passed and the kettle was screaming, like it had been repeatedly stabbed by Freddy Krueger. She spilled it into a mug, plopped in a teabag and let it brew. Watched the liquid slowly darken in color, shifting from liquid glass to vinegar. Apply a dash of cow juice, watch it take upon the appearance of Caucasian flesh.

Victoria briefly wondered what it was like to be a tea cup, if it was particularly meaningful or fulfilling work, if the tea cup felt satisfied with its place in life. Did it believe humans were inferior? Humans could drink tea, sure, the teacup must think, but they can only piss it out again. Tea is perfect, urine is disgusting. Why would they destroy something that was already perfect just to create piss? More study is necessary.

Does the teacup consider itself the master of its own destiny, or does it comprehend the pointlessness of its existence compared to mine? Does the teacup believe it is in control of the human? Does the teacup believe that when we feed it tea, that we are being mind controlled? I am currently operating at a level that the teacup cannot even comprehend and yet it believes that I am a tool. Such an arrogant, stupid tea cup.

Victoria poured the tea into the sink and smashed the cup against the wall. The ceramic shards scattered across the floor.

She felt nothing.

What was the point in that? Did the teacup even realize what was happening before it was shattered into a thousand pieces? If I sat down with the teacup and explained my thought process over the course of a thousand years would it ever understand why I decided to kill it? Did the tea cup still believe it was in control until the very end?

Was there any difference, from my perspective, between a dead tea cup and a living tea cup?

No.

Victoria made herself a cup of tea.

47.

Victoria was sixteen, sitting at her desk in class by the window watching a bird do the loop de loop, while her dad gave the tests back.

The test appeared on her desk.

F- You’re not even trying anymore.

Victoria sighed, and she began to flick through the paper while her father explained in blood red ink why she was a fuck up.

‘Man, you’re dad’s a mean old cunt.’ Said Alice, they had made a campfire in the forest beside the school and were drinking beer bottles.

‘Yeah.’ Victoria was about halfway through her own beer.

‘I was asking around the class, and you’re the only kid he ever gave an F-, I think he hates you, you know that right?’ Victoria sipped her beer. ‘You’ve been kind of quiet recently, what’s up?’

Victoria shrugged.

‘Come on, Vickie, don’t do this to me, I’m your best friend forever, we’ve got like an unbreakable voodoo relationship, when I eat, you shit, when you get a paper cut, I bleed, tell me what’s up, pretty please with a cherry on top.’

Victoria considered. ‘Promise you won’t tell anyone?’

‘Of course, dummy.’ Alice snorted.

‘Well… I’ve been kind of depressed recently,’ said Victoria. ‘and I’m thinking about killing myself.’

Victoria took a sip of beer.

Alice was silent.

‘Oh.’

Later that night, Alice was on the phone to her gal pals.

‘You will not believe who wants to kill herself, yeah, Victoria’s a total slit-wrist, ha ha!’

Gal pal: ‘Oh my god is that why she’s a grumpy old cunt all the time. Fuck that’s hilarious.

‘It gets better, I’m the only person she’s ever told.’ Alice put on a dreary morbid tone of voice, as she stood up on her bed, performing a one-man Shakespearean play: ‘”It’s such a relief to tell someone, blub, blub, I really felt like I was alone, I was too sacred to tell an adult blub, blub, but I’m like totally super glad you’re here for me, blub, blub.”’

‘Oh my god, I have like twenty people to call right now.’

‘Samesies!’

The next day Victoria was walking down the hallway to her locker with her earphones in. She could here people shouting, but she was deaf to all worldly concerns.

‘Little miss slit-wrist.’

‘Watch out she’s going to hang herself.’

‘Ticking time bomb coming through.’

Victoria didn’t notice any of it, she was listening to Happy by Pharrell Williams. What she did notice was somebody had cracked open her locker with a pair of bolt cutters.

She opened the locker, confused, to find someone had lynched a teddy bear inside, she was open mouthed.

The song finished, and finally she could hear everybody.

‘She looks mad.’ Giggle.

‘You won’t like her when she’s angry. When she’s angry she kills herself.’

‘Take pictures, before the moments gone!’

She saw the flash of someone’s camera.

‘What the fuck is wrong with you!’ screamed Victoria at Alice, she was smoking with her gal pals by the dumpster.

‘You have no right to speak to Alice that way!’ said a Gal Pal.

‘She’s an Olympic class cunt, and I can speak to her however I want.’

‘Victoria, honey,’ said Alice. ‘I only told like one person. You said I could tell one person, if I really needed to.’

‘I told you to keep it a secret, you fucking bitch!’

‘Agree to disagree.’ Said Alice, she offered Victoria a cigarette. ‘Smoke?’

And then one of the younger years, a six foot five lad, a rugby lad with more muscles in one pore than a fleet of horses, Victoria didn’t know his name, walked up to Alice and broke her arm.

‘OH MY GOD!’ said a gal pal. Some of her posse were stunned, the rest ran away.

Alice was on the floor, screaming and crying. ‘My arm, my beautiful arm!’

The rugby lad, just backed away and watched Alice on the floor.

‘Thank you.’ Said Victoria.

He nodded at her but didn’t say anything. 

Then she heard a screeching, high pitched whistle, and teachers began running outside to the crime scene.

Victoria and the rugby lad were waiting outside the head master’s office.

‘Hey, um, sorry about that.’ Said Victoria.

Shrug from rugby lad. ‘’s fine’

Pause. ‘I know this is a lot to ask, and you don’t have to do it… if you don’t want to…’ The rugby lad looked at her. ‘please don’t tell them, that I have… mental health issues. My dad would kill me if he found out.’

Pause.

‘Okay.’ Said the rugby lad.

‘Thank you.’

The headmaster’s door opened, the headmaster sent one of the gal pals out of the office (Alice was in hospital), and said: ‘Victoria Brittleson?’

Victoria got up, walked into the headmaster’s office-

-and she was in the car (passenger seat) being driven home by her dad.

‘Such a violent little brute, Alice was your friend wasn’t she?’  he said.

‘Not really.’

‘So he walks up to this girl, and breaks her arm for no reason, I mean, can you imagine.’

‘Yes, dad, I saw it.’

‘Expulsion’s too good for him.’

‘Wait what?’ she whipped her head to see her dad’s profile, as he flicked on his signal and turned left.

‘He was expelled. He was a danger to the female classmates. One of Alice’s friends, said he had threatened to kill them all in their sleep, I mean… God. To think we all had a little psycho like that running through the school. Still it’s not like the school lost a star pupil,’ he laughed. ‘he was always in the idiot class. He was-‘

‘He was the nicest person I ever met in my entire life and if you say one more bad word about him, I’m going to hit you, you fucking rodent.’

Her father was quiet.

They drove in silence.

And then Charlie Brittleson stopped the car, in the middle of the countryside five miles from home.

‘Why are we stopping?’ asked Victoria.

Her dad stared at her.

‘I’m sorry.’ Said Victoria.

Her dad stared at her.

Eventually she realized what he wanted. She undid her seat belt, opened the door and got out the car.

He drove away, and Victoria coughed in the exhaust fumes.

She sighed, put in her headphones and listened to sad music for two miles and then her phone ran out of battery.

She walked the rest of the way, alone with her bloody barbed wire thoughts and arrived at night.

48.

‘Victoria clean this shit up now!’ shouted her Father.

Victoria woke up.

Shattered tea cup, fuck.

She’d fallen asleep on the sofa, the TV playing gibberish. She rolled out of bed.

‘Sorry, sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’

‘Of course, you weren’t.’ Scolded her father, bag eyed and grumpy old man that he was. ‘I could have cut my foot, Victoria, you didn’t think of that did you?’

Victoria went wordlessly to the closet to collect the dust pan and brush, she fished them out started collecting all the shards in one place.

You’re a fucking prick. She thought. I… just go fuck yourself.

‘Do I get an apology?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry, Dad. Look I’m cleaning it up.’ She scraped the shards into the dustpan.

***

Chapter 5