Open face

    Gin fizzed in the tall boy, and the girl to his left glanced at him through shadow. Red and black soaked the room. Ahead, away from the patch of darkness he'd specifically chosen, three incongruous men dressed in brickie's clothes shouted over the din, stick-thin students sneering at them past buck teeth and eyeliner. A mirror on the far wall, closer to the door, showed half bar and half window leading to the wet night outside. Coal could see two bouncers in the silver light, luminous armbands Nazi over greatcoats. They wore black gloves. He finished half the drink in a mouthful and pushed himself further into the corner, only the knee of his crossed leg and the tip of his shoe visible to the curious twentysomething in the lit part of the table, sitting drinking with three others. His head, she saw, was a mark against the back of the sofa, eyes and teeth imagined. His hand flashed in the light as it took the drink again, the glass returning empty. He stared at her from his hole and she looked away.
    The bar was packed. He rolled his body off the edge of the seat, refusing to show his face to the woman, and vanished into the toilet. Indonesian decor suited Brighton's young population well, but Coal stared dead at the wooden carvings. Just gin. He locked himself away from the urinals and brought out a wrap, thankful to find the toilet empty when he entered. He ran a finger along the cistern and found it covered in jelly. He tipped powder onto the back of his hand, brought it to his face and inhaled. Fuck you. Gin.
    Back in the bar's black he found his seat taken. A wooden corridor ran down to the service area, away from the main floor space, and was only partially clogged with people. The cocaine was better than usual, and the back of his throat was already cold closed, his tongue numb. He used the fairy lights surrounding the bar to lead him through the passage and emerged to find a three-deep queue of man-boys with Sassoon hair and uncasual Goth-girls waiting neatly for drinks. He waited at the side of the throng, a man with a sweaty face and torn t-shirt eyeing him, a ten pound note clamped in a ringed hand. He backed his stare away from Coal's blank face, scrunching his brow.
    The brickies were becoming violent, heard even over the drippy house and clatter of posturing. One of them was shouting in Brighton Cockney, unseen behind the back of the wooden corridor. Coal evaporated as a glass flew over the bar and the doormen burst into the room. No one can see me. A scream and a bloody teenager. Bulldog men barking through the crowd, turned looks of panic in the velvet light, black donkey jackets bulking over the bony arms of boys and girls, an overweight woman dressed against her years shrieking as a roaring bouncer managed to squeeze his way through the press at the bar.
    A heavy impact shook the wall of the flimsy wooden passage. The bouncers were there, and power-shouts rocked over an exploding table and a cascade of sweetened glass. Grunting. Can't see me. Coal moved around the neck of the corridor, grinning, sliding an unloved cocktail from a small table and looking past the opening crowd to see the bouncers controlling the situation with headlocks and surreptitious fists.
    “Fuck you,” yelled a brickie from an armpit's folds. Another leant against a sofa, his face torn by glass. Coal snarled and finished the drink in one. “Fuck off. You fucking cunt. Fuck off. I'll fucking kill you.”
    “You fucking do that,” shouted the bouncer, sliding a heel down brickie shin. The man screamed and unbalanced himself, giving his captor the chance to haul him away from the scene by his neck. The other bouncer had approached the bleeding man with one hand outstretched in a gesture of calm. The injured brickie was crumpled with shock, and Coal saw now that his was seriously hurt, one side of his face sliced open. Coal saw teeth. The bouncer yelled for an ambulance as the brickie in the headlock threw himself into the mess of people surrounding the bar. The music stopped. The girl who'd been watching Coal in the shadows while he drank his gin was screaming at the top of her lungs, her friends pulling her away from the shaking man standing next to the sofa. The bouncer in front of him was gently wrapping a glass cloth over the wound in an effort to stem the bleeding.
    Coal sat at one of the upright tables while the rest of the people at the bar either left or stood in the midst of spilt alcohol and sounds of fear, watching on in morbid fascination. The front doors rushed open as the police entered, pushing a group of men trying to enter the bar aside to shouts of derision. Coal grabbed another drink, a full pint of lager. He finished it in one, satisfied by fullness and suffocation as the police handcuffed the headlocked brickie. Coal waltzed around, dodging the paramedics and moving back into the wooden corridor, slipping down to the toilets. He opened the wrap and inhaled the contents straight from the paper, finishing it. He gasped in delight, the lighting in the toilet flaring against his watery eyes as the powder dissolved over their whites. Chatter was replacing shouting at the bar, and, as his stood there, one hand against the wall, his face contorted, he heard the music snap back on. Two young men entered, giving him a second look and giggling before one locked himself in the toilet, the other waiting outside by the mirror, smoking. Coal shook his head and pushed himself away from the wall, clenching his eyes then forcing them open again, leaving the toilet.
    Back in the bar, people were starting tore take their seats, disbelieving that the scene could be so quickly mopped up. Coal was exploding. His mouth was open and he panted, his coat flapping around his hips, his hands flexing. The seat where the bleeding man had stood was shiny with the residue of a cleaning cloth and conspicuously empty. He sat heavily, eyes bulging, teeth bared. He grabbed a cigarette from a packet in his pocket and lit it with a lighter from the table where the girl had sat. The people surrounding it turned to him, masked by the deliberate shadows, their conversation cut dead. Coal threw the lighter back where it had come from.
    “Sorry,” he said.
    A man approached Coal's table. He was somewhere around 40, dressed in jeans and wearing a light, navy jacket over a black t-shirt. His face was pocked and looked like orange peel under the red spots. He ticked his head in greeting, squinted then laughed at Coal's wire-tight body.
    “Mate,” he said loudly over the beat. “You want to fucking calm down. I'll get you a drink.”
    Coal hissed, unable to speak. The cigarette was nearly gone, and he pulled another from the pack, lighting it from the end of the first. Another man had joined pock-face at the bar, putting his arm around his shoulder, shouting in his ear with his drink order. He was obviously excited, waving briefly at Coal through a twisted smile as he disappeared down the corridor to the toilet. The edge was coming off Coal's cocaine, but only slightly. His heart hammered his ribs. He smoked as hard as the puny cigarette would allow, dragging the end until it fell from the filter. He threw the orange plastic to the floor as the man from the toilet returned, his nose covered in powder.
    “Fucking hell, man,” said Coal, pointing with disgust. The other laughed like a dog. There were drinks on the table now, pints of lager, and the first man sat down, jeans casing his legs like skin.
    “Bit better now?”
    “Fuck off, Tim,” said Coal.
    Tim snorted and looked pleased with himself, smoothing back hair containing too much product. Greasy fuck. He was sniffing and pushing his hand over his mouth, blowing heavily, sighing from the bottom of his chest. Every time he caught Coal's eyes he grinned, then went back to his blowing. The man who'd just been to the toilet had evidently had too much. Tim was relaxed, but toilet man was gurning heavily, struggling to even remain upright on the sofa. He kept lifting his feet onto the seat then putting them back on the floor. Tim watched him with glee. The music picked up again. 'Cos I got the pills. Pills pills pills pills pills pills pills. Toilet man looked as though he was about to have a heart attack.
    “Fucking sort it out,” said Coal. “You'll get us fucking thrown out.”
    Toilet tried to get a hold of himself. The people on the table next to them were staring over, occasionally laughing into their drinks. Coal stood up. He made two steps towards the table and stopped next to the girl with the lighter.
    “Something funny?”
    The four faces blanched
    I want you, I need you.
    “No, mate.”
    “Good.”
    Coal didn't move. Fear rocketed between the looks of the four and he felt a distinct drop in his high. He jerked his legs away towards the toilet, hearing a commotion erupt behind him before he even reached the wooden corridor. He turned to see toilet man wrestling with a bouncer, and sighed. Tim was stepping back from the table holding two pints of lager, still laughing. Coal made for the door, his knees working at odd angles, Tim arriving at his side, slotting a glass into his hand, the two of them parting the crowd while they drank the beer. The bouncer pushed toilet man passed them, knocking a group of cocktail-drinkers aside like ten-pins. Coal and Tim barged through the door, still holding their glasses, to find the way blocked by the bouncer's back. Toilet man sprawled in the street, laughing, shouting incoherently.
    “You can't go out with those,” said a gigantic man with a bald head. Coal and Tim bent and put the glasses on the floor next to the door. The bouncer made to say something about putting them back inside but they weren't listening, shoving past and out into the street. Tim grabbed toilet man by the collar, cars and spray streaking their vision with sparkling red and white, lurching lasers punctuated with punch-hole neon. Then they were gone.

    Coal led the way through black streets to find drink. Toilet man became more manageable as they walked down East Street, past the Into You tattoo parlour and round the back of the Thistle hotel, along the seafront. Tim's face weathered with the minutes, his hair becoming lank in the rain. Coal noticed nothing. They were refused entry at the first place he picked at random but they were composed enough to get away with it at the second. The bar was lit with yellow sections encircled with black. Coal did another quarter of a gram in the toilet and entered a stupor, slumped in the corner of a wooden pew behind a Guinness. Toilet man and Tim did occasional lines in full view of the bar and laughed at him. The barstaff stared out of the window at the wet. When Coal came round he was slurring heavily and chewing his lip.
    “Have some of this,” said Tim, offering a wrap. It contained loosely-formed, yellowish crystals. “Careful with that. Only a bit.”
    Coal put the paper on the table with perfect movements, autopilot actions, one eye open, the other fighting hard to focus, avoiding beer rings and piles of ash. He picked up one of the larger crystals between his thumb and forefinger, testing its hardness briefly before placing it on his tongue. The chemical taste of urine permeated his saliva as he crunched. The effect was remarkable. Within minutes he was sitting upright.
    “Nice,” said Coal.
    Tim winked and went to the bar for more drinks. The table was littered with glasses. Coal became mesmerised by ice in a tumbler. Toilet man lolled on a stool. Got to get out of here. Tim returned and put glasses of white spirits onto the table with thuds, the glass and liquid shimmering through milky light and blurred vision. Coal drank his whole.
    “Got any more of that powder?” he asked.
    “Of course I have.”
    Tim handed Coal a wrap. He opened it and swallowed half of the granules.
    “You'll be awake for a week,” said Tim. He sipped his drink and swayed. “I'm not joking. You'll be fucked.”
    Coal stared blearily at him, spilling some bluish drink down his shirt. He mumbled, then stood away from the table and lurched towards the door.
    “Where the fuck are you going?” said Tim, eyes drooping, a sloppy smile vanishing instantly to be replaced with little retches. He looked forwards again, unseeing, his chin nodding towards his chest as the vomit came. Coal fell into a table but managed to right himself; a woman dressed in a skin-tight t-shirt barked an obscenity. He stood with one hand on the table. The woman came at him again, closer this time. Something about a drink. He took a tentative step away towards the door. Another footfall didn't bring disaster and he made some more, clattering through the half-locked double door and onto the street. Come on. Fucking come on. Want to fuck. Hey man, what the fuck's wrong with you? Fuck. Fuck off.
    A hand on a wall. A spiraling can of beer, arching foam against the sky, lit from below. A sex shop. Three for one poppers. Do you a deal, mate. Fucking hell. Mark, check this out. Fingers and wrist covered in cold liquid. Hard puking, pounding. Black again. A cab.
    “I want to have sex with girls.”
    Silence from the front of the car then the rustle of a nylon jacket.
    “What?”
    “I need a brothel. Fuck knows. Do you know?”
    A foreign man covered in hair in the car's interior light, orange, an eye's glint and a diseased lung.
    “I know one place.”
    Coal fought to keep his head up, sprawling over the seat, yelping non sequiturs.
    “Have you got any money?”
    “Yeah. Fucking money. Yeah, I have. Don't fucking worry.”
    He made random noises. The driver turned to face the grimy windscreen and put the car in gear, the engine whining into life against a backdrop of thinning traffic. Coal pushed himself upright, instantly going over again, pressing his face into the seat's cloth, grunting, his fingers and toes cramping uncontrollably. Fuck. The car swung a left, leaving thick streetlight behind, darkness becoming interspersed with occasional white. Fuck. He managed to get himself up again, forcing his back into the seat. He looked up at the rearview mirror to find a pair of eyes fixed intently on the backseat, shooting back to the road, then back again to the man behind. Coal couldn't escape the back-throat taste of solvent and busied himself with trying to ascertain where they were going. Nothing outside the car's watery windows made any sense. Don't fucking care.
    The eyes flashing in the mirror, a stream of Brighton streets and never any sign of the sea. Tiny roads he never knew existed. Deep breaths. Just weathering a storm. The car stopped.
    “How much?” Coal was having difficulty forming words. He felt as though his mouth was being torn apart.
    “A tenner. That door.”
    He hooked his fingers through the handle, unable to flex them, using them as a handless man might use a hook. The muscles at the top of his arm were in a hopeless spasm, leaving him flapping at the elbow, unable to get enough traction to open the door. The eyes in the front were replaced by hair as the driver turned.
    “I need a tenner, mate.”
    Coal pulled the fingers away from the door. He sat still, the driver staring at his warping face, waiting for the exact moment when he'd be able to reach inside his jeans and pull out his wallet. His cheeks were rising and falling independently of his mouth, which by turns showed pushed lips and teeth. God. Come on. He bunched together the fingers of his right hand and pushed them into the top of his pocket. His chest jerked but next he was out of the car, his hand crushing his brown leather wallet, the door open, the driver obviously satisfied.
    “Nice one,” said the man, laughing, getting out on the pavement to close the back door, never taking his eyes from Coal's back. “You have a good time.”
    Coal waved a claw behind him by way of farewell. The world in front of his eyes was streaking at beserk angles as his head jarred from side to side, a yellow door with hacked paint spinning upwards and opening inwards to a flight of stairs covered in red lino sided by a stripped pine banister. A room with a huge man and a table with a plant.
    “You alright, love?”
    “Want two women. How much?”
    Blond hair piled and pinned. Garish make-up. The man unmoved on the sofa. The impression of tits.
    “Forty five quid. That good for you?”
    “Yeah. Good. Where do I go?”
    The room was a mess of colour. Red and green carpet merged into the blue walls and the woman looked to him as though she was being thrown violently from side to side.
    “Wait there.”
    She picked up the phone.
    “Yeah. He wants two girls. He's really pissed.”
    The man led him through the door and up some more stairs. Two flights. Another woman and a room with a bed and a television. This is a fucking nightmare.
    “Why don't you sit here for five minutes and watch this? Get you in the mood, yeah?”
    She had dark hair and pushed him down gently at the shoulder, but he fell most of the way to the edge of the bed. Chipped patent stilettos from the back as she walked from the room, the door closing. Porn blared on the ancient TV, the room's light dancing over the superimposed image of cock and cunt. A white square framing skin against the red drench from numerous bulbs on the walls. The lurching was redoubled, and he whimpered, the door opening on a man with the face of a crying child. There were no tears. Two women walked in, both wearing untied pink dressing gowns over negligees, stockings and suspenders, a different colour for each woman. What the fuck. One of the women was black. Both were in their forties. Never fucked a black girl.
    “Hello.”
    He was unable to say anything.
    “Why don't you take your clothes off?”
    He fell over sideways on the bed, rolling backwards and grabbing at his belt. His eyes were closed but he was forced to open them again before he threw up. Fingers flapped helplessly at the buckle. The two women started to undress him, one taking care of his jacket and shirt, the other his trousers. Coal instantly relaxed, imagining himself to be part of some scientific experiment, having been administered a drug, a rat in a box being filmed by an unseen eye. The smell of old sweat and foot odour began to suffocate the room and the white woman caught her breath. The black woman yanked down his boxer shorts with some difficulty, disgust creasing her nose. Coal stared at the ceiling where it tipped sickeningly to one side; he jerked his head upwards to get a view of the woman and stave off vomit. Blurring obscured expression. His cock, he knew, was flaccid.
    “What do you want to do, then?”
    “I want to fuck you.” Coal retched. “You two kiss and I'll fuck you.”
    “Let's put a condom on you first.”
    Sensation left the space behind his eyes as he fell backwards again, grunting in agreement. Desperation passed between the two women at the edge of his vision, his mind failing to push blood into his penis. The white woman rolled the rubber over his semi in a show of routine, grabbing his foreskin through the condom and tugging the sheath down to his sweating pubes. Uncertain, the black woman lay on the bed next to Coal while he struggled to his knees, the white woman hoisting him by an elbow.
    “Are you alright, love?”
    “Yeah.”
    On the screen, a girl with no hair pulled a gigantic cock from a rectum and pushed it into her mouth so far she choked.
    “I'm fine.”
    The white woman held him steady as he lowered his pelvis onto the black woman, his hand either side of her hips as though he were doing a female press-up. She was wearing red underwear made of cheap lace. Dimpled fat lolled over red stockings. Coal panted, pushing a hand into his crotch and nearly toppling. The black woman grabbed his cock and pushed it against her cunt, but he wasn't hard enough to penetrate her. He thrusted forwards, the woman's hand still cupping the condom, then thrusted again. Leaning back, he lifted his head level and pushed forwards three more times. The white woman leaned over, watching like a nurse.
    “It's not in.”
    Coal rolled onto his back.
    “Why don't we suck it, love?” said the black woman.
    How. Come to this.
    “Yeah. Kiss her.”
    The two woman looked at each other. Squinting through one eye, Coal down-turned his mouth and pulled his balls, arranging them. The white woman shrugged inside her black underwear and kissed the black woman. Coal's breathing steadied. The two women were kissing as though they loved each other. Lights on the ceiling burnt his eyes and the room swung again. The black woman's mouth on his cock stopped the sick. He tipped his head up and glanced down to see a woman either side of his hips, his blackened feet sticking out at the end of white legs passed their heads, the flocked walls dancing in the background. He failed to harden in the white woman's mouth. She passed it back to the black woman. Tears rolled down his face. Porn of some kind that made no sense to him thrashed on the television screen.
    “Time's up, love.”
    “That's right,” said the black woman. “It's been half an hour now.”
    “OK,” Coal shouted, sitting upright. His head rolled forward and he grunted, throwing it back again. Then he faced straight ahead and squinting his vision into temporary focus, the two women standing slowly and making a few small steps away. He pulled clothes on while they watched.
    “Did you enjoy yourself, love?”
    “Yeah. Was great. I'm going to get some more money.”
    He lurched away from the bed, his trousers hanging open, a fastened belt stopping them from falling. Over the carpet to the door. Spit welled in his loose lower lip, his arm cramping up back into a claw. Stairs, and the large man again. A street shining yellow. Poppers and vomit. Trudging towards brighter lights, passing cars glowing against wet roads. Still got my wallet, he thought, and grinned, one shoulder against the corner of a cashpoint. A hundred quid and some poppers. He looked back across towards some loosely lit buildings as though he'd eaten poison, eyes slitted and lips drawn back over teeth that clamped his tongue. More poppers. Walking and no hope of finding the brothel.

    The speed abated slightly and he was able to stand straight. Pocketing the solvent, he leant backwards against a soaked wall, inhaling deeply and staring in either direction down the street as his face freed itself from the worst of the contortions. Sighs rushed from his lips, which pulled into a mixture of smiles and shakes. Walking off, he found his legs more free than they had been, less pigeon-toed. Early morning cabs lurked like mid-sized dogs, collars locked, wiry faces creeping out from behind steering wheels. Thin rain coated streetlights. Coal's wet jeans tugged at his fat legs. Tinsel-clad women wobbling on heels ruined his solace and he hugged walls. Can't see me. Shirts and shoes throwing up in front of Black Marias. Some man in handcuffs, one shoe off and one shoe on, socks ruined. Coal stopped in an alley and sniffed as much poppers as he could fit in his lungs, capped the bottle and staggered back out into the street past a group of policemen, his speed surging back to an intolerable level. Giggles and jibbers. Away from Brighton's main lights and down towards the sea. Walking for miles. Crack streets in Hove. Two women and a man standing in a doorway.
    “I want two women.”
    “You got money, mate?”
    “Yeah.”
    “This way.”
    Into a house filled with bedsits. No street-hookers in Brighton. The lalas wouldn't stand for it. It's proper down here.
    “How much is it?”
    “What do you want to do?”
    “What do you do?”
    “Tenner a blowie. Twennie a fuck. If you wanna fuck us both it's sixty quid.”
    “I want to fuck you both.”
    He handed over three twenties. The woman took the money and vanished. Eyelids flickered as he inhaled, the smell of dope making him nauseous. The room had a bare bulb and a mattress. Voices outside the door and painted blue walls with a patch of damp next to the ceiling. The woman came back in.
    “Right.”
    She grabbed his belt and he slumped backwards against the wall. Camphor and silverfish. Sweat cracked onto his brow as she pushed on a condom. Again, he urged himself erect with no real consequence. The woman sank to her knees and began sucking his shriveled penis in an effort to stimulate it, tugging the saggy foreskin backwards and forwards with her teeth.
    “Get a load of these,” said the other woman, pulling open a thin, green top to show breasts nestled in an open bra. Coal leant forward and spat in her cleavage, almost falling, then licked her neck, licking down to her tits. The woman between his legs tutted in frustration and moved her head away as his body twisted. He slumped his weight against the standing woman and she brought up her arms, pushing him back. He lifted his head back against the wet wall, grabbed his genitals and shook them, tried to wake them.
    “Here,” said the standing woman. The previous suckee stood back, her mouth set in an “o” below a lacquered helmet of black hair in the bulb's hard light, watching the kneeling woman as she gingerly held the base of his penis next to his stinking pubic hair and jutted her head backwards and forwards on his now tiny cock. Coal continued to slump towards the door, using the frame as support but becoming increasingly prone to knee-buckling. His eyes twisted behind their lids.
    The woman stopped.
    “It's not happening, is it?”
    “Nah. He's fucked.”
    Standing, the woman wiped her mouth and walked out of the room, the other hesitating then following, leaving Coal standing against the wall. Light from the bulb swung through his field of vision as he jerked himself into space to stand independently in the room. Deafening noise matched watery colour as he fell into the door and slammed it, then opened it, then fell to one knee, tripped by his open trousers.
    “Wait,” he said.
    The two women were out on the street, he saw through the open door, a cube of red black superimposed on faded white walls lit from within.
    “Wait,” he said.
    “Fucking back off,” said the man.
    “Come on.”
    “Do yourself a favour and fuck off.”
    The three of them were walking down the street away from Coal, who attempted to follow.
    “Are you fucking thick?”
    Clattering heels on tarmac and paving slabs. And alone. He sat on a curb between two cars and fastened his trousers, his head hanging down between his knees. Rain fell again, wetting his hair and shoulders. He lay backwards, carefully, with his feet in the gutter and his head on the pavement, and closed his eyes. Patterns leapt through loops and trellises, blocks of colour messing with the black. He pulled himself upright, grunting, then rolled over onto a shoulder and pressed his weight away from the ground.
    “Fucking hell,” he said.
    Walking away, he found the reeling was subsiding rapidly. He could walk in straight lines for a time, but his jaw was cramping and his vision blurred. Cars supported him at convenient intervals. An autopilot moved his feet towards Kemp Town, and sex stayed at the forefront of his thoughts; faces from cars scanned him without provoking reaction. Wet brick cooled his palms as the unbalance dissipated, wet shoes gnawing at skin as yet unable to feel pain. Traffic was reduced to police and taxis and people that needed neither. St James's Street then smaller roads, white light gone to orange, lit doors and men. Coal looked for anything still open, but the yellow from the last cab office spilled far back down the street and the bars and pubs were well shut.
    “Got any drugs?” he asked a two men walking past. They put their heads down and moved off. Rain fell again. A wall held him as his eyes hooded almost passed opening. Someone was there and he pushed himself upright, opening his face wide. Shoes then nothing.
    “Hey.”
    Coal failed to register.
    “Hey. Over here.”
Through the mists there was a man. He was standing away from the street, down a ramp running through to an alley. His arms were making large movements and Coal could see a smile in the grime.
    “Over here,” he hissed. Coal walked over to him. Then he stepped off the street and into the shadow. “You didn't think I'd let you get away, did you?”
    Coal moved his blank face forwards and slid his hand up the man's back. When they kissed, Coal was shocked awake by the clatter of teeth and the grind of stubble. The man motions increased in intensity, a hand holding the back of Coal's head, the other resting on his hip as he pushed into Coal's groin with his pelvis.
    Coal groaned and opened his mouth wide, his tongue hard against that of the other man, their lips forced together. He pushed the man back against the wall, still kissing him, and drew his palm up the front of his jeans, cupping it around his erection. The man tore his head away, moving the hand on Coal's hair to his shoulder. Coal tried to focus through the smeared glasses.
    “Oh, you're great. Let's go to mine,” said the man. “I live near here.”
    “OK,” said Coal, leaning forwards against the wall.
    “Come on,” said the man, pulling Coal's arm. Coal's mouth was open and the wall's bricks were against his teeth. “It'll take a few minutes. Then we can lie down.”
    The man held Coal up as they walked through some kind of parked area and down a car-lined street filled with nothing but black, dabs of orange and the hiss of lone cars along the prom. Coal made an effort to fondle the man's backside as they walked along. The man laughed.
    Indistinct lighting and the closing of a door. A dark space. The man was naked and Coal was in bed. A beige carpet. Coal sucked in his stomach and lay flat on his back, arching his spine as the man pulled down his underwear. The man lay next to Coal and they kissed, passionately again, the man's hand firmly holding Coal's hardening cock. Coal reached over to the man's body and stroked his balls.
    “Yes,” said the man.
    “I want you in my arse,” said Coal.
    “Not yet,” said the man. “We've got all night.”
    The man sucked Coal's cock, now that it was very hard. Coal groaned.
    “Is that nice?” asked the man.
    “Yes,” said Coal. “Yes, it is.”
    “Do you want to come in my mouth?” asked the man.
    “Yes,” said Coal.
The man sucked and licked Coal's cock for minutes. Coal was reminded of the tongue of a dog. The man's hand wrapped around Coal's naked thigh and his nails dug in. Coal gasped. Eventually the man stopped, apparently tired. His eyes showed their whites, but he was smiling. His hand worked Coal's wet cock, up and down.
    “Come on my face,” said the man.
    “I'd like to,” said Coal.
    The man dropped his face back up next to Coal's, his hand still rhythmically working between Coal's legs. Coal dropped his hand back to the man's cock, but found it saggy. He wanked it nonetheless.
    “I'm going to come,” said Coal.
    “Oh yes. Yes,” said the man. “Don't feel bad if I don't though, will you? I've had a lot to drink.”
    “I don't mind,” said Coal.
    Coal arched his back and ejaculated.
    “Wow,” said the man. “I got some on my face. That's so nice.”
    The man lowered his head onto Coal's cock and began to suck. Coal pulled his teeth back in a smile and sighed.
    “Please fuck me,” said Coal. “I want you in my arse.”
    “I'll try,” said the man. He pulled himself up onto all fours, then up onto his knees. He face was hidden in the darkness away from the bed's sidelight. Above the torso was the impression of a head, below the stomach a gripped fist trying to wank a cock to erection. Coal ran fingers through semen on his stomach, tapping his fingertips together. He licked his fingers and he man's cock noticeably stiffened. The man reached over to the bedside table, his face dipping into the small bulb's pool of light. He snapped open a plastic bottle and squeezed a thick fluid onto his fingertips, then closed the bottle and rested back on his heels, coating his cock.
    “Turn over,” said the man.
    Coal did so.
    The man knocked his knees against the inside of Coal's legs, parting them. Coal raised his buttocks by drawing his knees toward him. The man seemed to be in an awkward position so Coal raised himself further. The man pressed his cock between Coal's cheeks, then adjusted his body and pulled Coal up by the hips. The man reached down with both hands and smeared Coal's anus with the remains of the fluid. Coal stiffened and pushed his face into the pillow, moaning. The man forced himself against Coal but wasn't hard enough to penetrate.
    “You're really tight,” he said.
    “Keep trying,” said Coal.
    The man pushed the head of his cock back against Coal's anus, but quickly gave up.
    “Never mind,” said Coal.
    “I can't get it in,” said the man.
    “It doesn't matter,” said Coal. “Here.”
    Coal rolled over and curled himself backwards on the bed, foetus-like, and moved his head to the man's groin, taking his semi-turgid, lubricated cock in his mouth. He chewed on it slightly, and the man laughed. Coal's eyes flickered against the room's womby gold.
    “God,” said the man.
    Despite Coal's sucking, the man failed to stiffen. Some time passed, Coal thought, the room settling into a slow spin. They talked and kissed. The man's name was John, and he was 35 years old. John was a nurse. John held Coal in bed while he skirted consciousness.
    The conversation, such as it was, became fragmented as day dawned, reality painting their den an unwelcome silver. Coal emerged shattered from his drugs, suddenly, and left the sheets, ready to leave.
    “Hey,” said John. “Don't go. Stay here. We can get some breakfast. Can I call you again?”
    He grabbed Coal's arm. Coal turned, sat on the edge of the bed, attempting to pull his arm away but failing. John reached up quickly and took him by the back of the neck, pulling his face down. Coal saw that John's skin was pockmarked, that the edges of his eyes were deeply lined. John reached up and violently kissed Coal, painful stubble making Coal wince and he pulled back hard. John's grip failed and Coal stood away from the bed.
    “Yes, of course you can,” Coal said. “My mobile number's oh nine seven nine oh, four eight two seven eight four six. Here. I'll write it down for you.”
    Coal picked up a pen from the bedside table and scribbled the number, a lie, on an envelope. John reached out and grabbed his wrist.
    “I have to go,” said Coal.
    “Stay here,” said John. “We can fuck all day.”
    Coal tore his arm away. John made no move to follow it. The smile shrank from his mouth and fatigue clouded his face.
    “I have to work,” said Coal. “My number's there. Just call me.”
    “I will,” said John carefully, the smile splitting his lips again. “I had a great time. I think you're amazing.”
    “I had a great time too,” said Coal.
    “Kiss me,” said John.
    “I have to go,” said Coal.
    “Please,” said John.
    “OK,” said Coal, bending.
    They kissed, mouths wide open. John rested his hand against Coal's bare thigh, then stroked his leg down past the knee. He fell back onto the pillow as two tears dropped to his lashes.
    Coal dressed, the drugs picking back up as blood worked around his system. His socks stank.
    “Sorry,” said Coal.
    “For what?” asked John.
    “Nothing,” said Coal, standing, pulling his shoes on and stepping toward the door. "Just forget it."

To simplify, my love

    Stone plaques squat on some of the spots, red granite carved with mountain village scenes and dead-eyed cows. Porcelain bouquets, streaked with age, sit aside testaments to service on the mossier flags, once proud notes of remaining brothers from les anciens du combatants and prisonniers de guerre rusting in the pure air. A man dead at 21 looks down from the black and white porcelain disk in his headstone: la 1re armée française, Rhin et Danube 1944 et 1945. The Tricolour below the chiselled text has been muted from three to one.
    Glass in the metal frames of the wealthier graves is broken in places, as are the older porcelain name-plates, one painted with a scene of fields and trees. Its edges are aged brown, and the pieces undisturbed. A copper cat stares into the forest, death sitting beneath it in segmented solitude; unseen corpses in bullet-line rows; order unworried by time, safe in resistant obedience.
    Pheasants, shotguns and tractors mark a piece of glass on Jean-Claude's grave, the relief's curved surface sucking green from the pines at the back of the cemetery before wringing it to grey, lensing the life from the trees. His tomb is wide enough for two, but his side is empty yet. A solid blue sky domes him and his neighbours; chainsaws serenade from the woods. À notre ami, à notre voisin; Albert, André, Michel.
    At the end of a row of smooth, bright pitches lies a mound of earth, chalky sand churned to gravel. Plastic roses red to pink, feathered by the summer sun and brittler from winter, rattle in a vase. A green urn of brown stems is toppled at the side. A stone plaque from the grave next door bears the image of a single flower and one word: regrets. Patches of unused plots pushes through the undergrowth to find her clearing in front of the bus, trodden down and reeking of damp. Creepers wrap handles, 50s wood warped by the pine forest micro-climate, rain and frost sucked out by summer heat and the eternal needle carpet. Anthills stand dead under magpie chatter, the air around her melting and reforging to allow her feet into the shadows, over a pile of blue slates stored there for no reason unknown years ago. Inside the vehicle’s body is the smell of mushrooms and leather; the seat coverings have been bitten back by the Correzian winter, leaving exposed frames once cherry red and a bare earth floor poisoned by leaking oil. In the back of the bus sit benches against the iron frame, dusted with oak leaves and broken. One is coated in smashed glass. A pure white sun casts chicken stock, diaphanous light across the seat, shadows rubbed to nothing by the season. Ice crystals lock with enamel blue and blood rust spots on the fuselage. She pushes herself into the back of the bus and sits on the wooden floor. Through the gaps in the boards she can see a wheeless axle and whitewall tyre casing, lines of machine through clouds of breath; she takes cigarette papers and a tied plastic bag from her black wool pocket. Cold at bay with the shakes, tossing her black hair from side to side, puffing in the bus. One paper one way and one the other at the end of it, licked halfway to form an l-shape. Creased diagonal one way then the other to make a funnel. She crushes in buds then fishes a Marlboro from a packet, nods her head up and down while she works her chin, licks and rolls, produces a Bic and lights up, acid smoke filling her space and rolling over her eyes while she laughs and talks to herself. Outside there is nothing but the woods. Smoke after smoke and the ice takes her hands and her legs beneath the ribbed tights and boots and she pulls her hat down to warm her ears, scratching at her eyes and sniffing up snot. Smoke and smoke and the air holds her chest in place, props her up as she jabbers annunciatory, standing up bent with half the joint left and back through the benches out out out of the bus, off the bus to the trees. She looks back at the stripped birches in the split windscreen, beating around in her clearing to regain a sense of feeling in her feet, spitting at the rotten cream and powder blue duotone of the paintwork and away back through the bushes to a path once well-travelled and now used by no one, not another person but her, an unbroken, rusted beech blanket heaped up against mixed trees; brutal bark frozen solid; leaf edges razor and sparkling sickly in the deadlight. She creates the only footprints in the leaf river as she spits this way and that before leaving the throughway and taking to the forest proper, the smoke gone somewhere back near the bus. I am the trunks and the leaves my feet and the branches my hair and the sky my mind; she falls to her knees and listens for the river then up and closer into the imperious trees, the oaks, the beech, the birch and down to the pines sown in the river basin; she throws her hat and drops her coat, drags up the sleeves of her shirt and slams her forearms into the bark, demanding to be bitten then licking the blood as she lies in the mulch on her back and watches the trees’ arms struggle under the weight of the jelly sky, the sun heaping waves of burnt cream over lifeless branches as her breath plumes up from her mouth to kiss the trunks and stroke the leaf-fall around her shoulders and neck. After some time she pulls herself up against an oak and makes another joint, retying her hair from where it’s slopped over the side of her glowing face and reproaching herself for the torn skin on her arms. She sits against the bark on a bole, the tree’s base keeping her backside from the worst of the wet, and rolls up quickly, lacy blood running into her eye-whites and the voices in her skulls crowing at her stupidity for losing her hat. She puts the joint in a crease in the tree bark and runs back through the trees, her path easily spotable in the otherwise undisturbed leaves, and finds the black beanie lying snagged on a snatch of grey brambles. Purple lumps coagulate as she watches her arms before bringing her attention back to the hat, taking it from the bush and pulling it onto her head, then retracing her steps through the trees. A moment taken to recapture breath and hood her eyes against the declining drugs before sitting back into the bole and listening for the river again, finding it after a few seconds. Pure cannabis glows under the lighter’s flame, a rock of amber stitched to the forest’s wedding dress lace, and green smoke bellows from her cracked lips. Her hands are freezing, and the voices tell her she’s stupid to smoke without tobacco, that it won’t just be her arms this time, but she pulls harder and remains as silent and as still as possible, her wet hat against the oak bark, the second drag rolling in her open mouth unforced, wisps dragging from the corners of her lips and over the olive tan of her cheeks like milk in tea; smoke pours up her left wrist to hood her thumb; her eyes roll to see nothing but the voices, the voices mooching backwards and forwards between her ears full of pillows and schedules, needles and cotton: a crack. In front. She exhales, yellow smoke dragging out the sunbeams, invisible security protecting the jewels, barriers to the trap. The deer is no more than a metre from her and she can’t fathom how it ever got so close; she blows out hard, drawing lines in the air with her smoke; the animal bends down to spring before darting to one side then back again the other way at the smells of the joint and the sight of the laser clouds, then back again with a whinny before thumping away over the frozen leaves, white tail in velvet then vanished. Her throat is blocked. Tiny breaths. She draws the smoke into her lungs again, taking eminent care with her movements, not moving her body in any way aside from her hand and arm and lips and chest, then lets the smoke hang in her mouth again as her eyes rolls back up into her head and the cannabis fog dissipates across the face of tessellated bark.
    After a time she comes around to find the light has moved on over the sky, and the whites from earlier have deepened. Teeth squeaking on the inside of her mouth, she nods forward and takes a sharp breath as pain in her neck left by the freezing morning worries her. On her knee is a welt surrounded by a hole in her tights and a thin crust of ash. Pushing forward off the tree she stands then falls then stands again, shaking. A net of lights hangs between the branches strewn with pearls, flexing fractals dancing over the bark and leaf mould, the rushing of the water beyond pushing through it in horizontal waves; she raises her arms up zombie and starts to giggle, crunching foot beyond foot through the trunks unconsciously led by the river. She is on the bank and looking out over a swollen grey vein clouded by her breath. Roots cancer the muddy torrent on all sides, their surfaces fragile with an ice incapable of catching the current. Cries and time goes and comes and she pushes up through the trees until hits a path she knows and keeps climbing then running then stopping with her face sloppy and grey. Gradiated green from violent, luminous pea to black on the other side, the trunks bend out of the ground like mushroom stalks. She has reached a log covering the path, a large dead pine, dead-fallen, its branches stripped of bark and risen antlers. The ground beyond is a bed of frozen moss. Filtered white drinks orange mist as the weak sun begins to burn off ice cloaking the pine needles and leaf-fall in a ghostly vapour-shell; the rocks around are sprayed green with lichen and green seeps into every angle of her vision and the path forwards is forbidden by the horns winces as she crosses the threshold into the lobby, the bright white of the reception strangling her pupils after the rainy night. At the desk, Claudette looks up, her face lit from below by the shift lamps, and smiles.
    “Ça va?”
    “Ben ouais,” she says, shaking off her hood and sniffing up raindrops. Her hair is jet in the dimness. “Toi aussi?”
    “Ça va,” says Claudette, watching her deal with her wet coat and scarf, a flurry of half-seen and sighing. “C’est calme. J'etais tout seule cet après-midi, donc j'ai eu la chance.”
    She grins as she approaches the desk, pushing her light blue cotton dress over her thighs then pulling up the white collar to stretch the buttoned front over her chest. She pins her hair back as tightly as possible and passes a palm over an eyebrow. They look each other in the eye momentarily before she begins pulling out schedules and picks up a red pen.
    “Il faut que la patronne embauche plus du personnel bientôt,” she says.
    Claudette huffs: “Elle est une vraie connasse.”
    She snorts and crosses a line through a box on her sheet, the light and shapes of the desk swimming around her hands and fingers, the crepuscular air congealing, groaning as she checks her nails and curls her lip; eyes dart from word to word and line to line, a high note singing across the top of her skull.
    “J'y vais,” she says.
    Cream walls and green carpet line a corridor of low bulbs and slow alarms, dots of sound on a page of waved light confirming drips still drip. Door after door, one hand on the wall then stopping to recuperate before standing high in her dress and moving onward with no aid. Between the lights lining the ceiling are areas of relative blackness, and these push down on her strict hair, the brighter parts of the passageway pulling her up straight: the darkness crushes her shoulders together and and they fall towards the floor. Behind the doors the hairless chimps, the nothing proof. Eyes hood then brighten and she falters, presses on her abdomen and tilts her face to the floor. I look, but I cannot find the relevance of relevance, she says; there is no validity in existence, in my magnetic mess of fibres and neurons, in their puerile complexity; it’s a fluke. At the corner of the corridor is a well of black, but there is no limitless possibility, no mystery. I am monkey. I read a story today about a man who fired a nail into his brain and continued to work. That’s how important a man’s brain is to a man; you can shoot a nail into it and not even know. I am sufficiently elaborate to dominate my environment, this shadow, this tunnel in this building, the ancients this building houses. Logic is meaningless, she says as she pushes her face into the black corner; a dreamlike glitch; monkey struggles to remember even the simplest things; shopping lists, names, births and deaths; is unable to reliably retain information for even a day; cannot be sure in a witness box despite knowledge of experience thanks to basic brain; a tragedy of subjectivism, a sham of sophistication. She pulls her lips away from the wallpaper to leave a string of spit, becoming conscious again of the rolls of beeps from behind the doors, the beeps pushing against the frame of the corridor’s light like fetal fingers pressing on the stretched belly of pregnancy. Towards the door on the right. Existence could vanish now, cease to exist, she says, and the ramifications would be irrelevant. There would be no ramifications. There is no relevance. There’s only relevance where I choose to place it. My nature is to exist to needlessly procreate; to eat; to love; to master. Her hand, pure white, hooks over the handle and a warm rush hisses from the opening crack; in the room the light and air are flatter than the corridor. I beat myself with invented sticks in a phantom reality, boil my emotions because I have emotions to boil, she says, standing in the centre of the tiny room. I chart complexity because it hides me from simplicity. Existence is a lie. Non-existence is release. And the man in the bed has suffered enough.
    “You have suffered enough,” she says, placing a hand on the side of his turtle neck. Ma chérie, he whispers, tears rolling over the papery skin covering his nose onto the pressed, striped pillow linen to rattle on the table as he closes his hand over hers. She swims up in the safety of his presence, up from the cold asperity of her mother’s tongue and her father’s silent disparagement, pushing up from the prisoned depths of the world of children to take his fingers at the surface of adulthood, lifted out to a café and a street and the sun and the warmth of love and desire. Her nails and lips are immaculate, she knows, and he thinks of nothing more than the flash of her blue eyes against a rim of mascara and the promise of a life and family in the milky skin beneath his privileged palm. A smile as she drops brown sugar into her coffee, continued stirring as she raises her eye back to his. Je t’aime, she says wordlessly, et je t’aime say his teeth, his lips and brow guns in the woods and the wail of sirens in the town, hugged together to protect her belly sound of German voices and pressing down on his face with the pillow while he continues to sob, ma chérie, ma chérie. All her weight is more than enough to stop him moving, and she walks again through the trees and the ice, searching for the river. When she dips her hand in to drink, she removes the pillow and ensures there’s no breath.
    She looks at him for some time.

Rewriting The Ooning

I've decided to rewrite The Ooning from scratch. The entire project's been bothering me since I announced I was going to publish it. Having gone through the pages for a final sub towards the end of last year, it's obvious it's not indicative of my current style; "editing" isn't going to change that. Almost ten years have passed since I first started writing it, and if it's going to be the first public example of what I can do with long form, it has to be in line with me now. And that means I have the bin the existing draft.

Going back over The Ooning's story wasn't the only option. I've been thinking about writing something entirely new for about a year. I do have some solid ideas for the next book, but starting from zero would mean a first draft probably wouldn't emerge until 2013, and it would probably kill The Ooning for good.

I don't want to just consign it to the "failed" pile. I spent a great deal of time and effort making sure the story worked, and I believe it has legs. While the writing itself is naive and there's a swathe of superfluity in both the structure and prose, I'm sure I can rewrite it into a much tighter piece. There's been a good amount of interest in it - certainly enough to make it worthwhile - so to simply can it would be dumb. I'll start again. It's not as if I have anything better to do.

I'm actually excited about it. The current draft is comic book in its vision; the idea at the time was to create something fantastical and over-the-top. Since I wrote it, my general creative direction has become more realistic, and I think it's darkened considerably. As soon as I made the decision to rewrite the entire thing, I started looking back at the characters and imagining how they could be if I stripped away the childishness and "wonder". Grimness is a hobby of mine, so applying it wholesale should give something interesting.

It's also given me the opportunity to re-work the structure. I sketched out the bones of it this week, and it's far leaner than the current draft. A few of the "colour" characters were dropped immediately: I found this liberating. Of course the baker doesn't make sense. And of course there needs to be a longer introductory period to flesh out the protagonist. I thought I'd be fearful of going back to square one, but it's clear now it's a necessary part of my creative process.

As well as trimming away character fat, I've taken out some awkward plot devices. There was some stuff I shoehorned in to make everything "work," but with fresh eyes I can see things that simply aren't needed. I had tendency to "what if" absolutely everything at the time, but I don't think the people in the book would ever be as meticulous. I doubt any of them had a plan b.

The current draft's at about 56,000 words. If I'm diligent I should have a new version at some point in the summer. I'm very busy with work - as ever - but it's only a short book and I don't see any reason why it can't happen quickly. I know the story so well that forming the new chapter structure took less than an hour, and I'm now using my ceiling-in-the-night moments to plan style and instances. It's coming. And it'll be better for the wait.