DOOR part 2

A continued story of bigotry, with some (very) graphic gore, and flowers

[You should read part 1, here, first]

There was music somewhere, insistent, whining at him. It kept repeating, a mad carnival theme played on a burning merry-go-round. Johnny forced his eyes open. His phone was ringing the Nokia theme over and over. He reached across and thumbed the green circle.

‘Johnny, I need you down here.’ It was the warehouse manager.

‘Fuck off, I’m not in today.’ Johnny’s head was pounding like he’d been out on the lash last night and his sheet was soaked in sweat.

‘Yeah, well your bestie hasn’t turned up and I can’t get hold of him. Somebody needs to unload 3 tons of winter cabbage before the driver goes postal. And the trucks are starting to stack up. We’ll need a bloody holding pattern like Heathrow soon. So, get your arse out of bed and down here. I’ll pay you time and a quarter.’

‘Time and a half.’

‘Deal. Now get a fucking move on.’ Johnny could tell by the grin in his boss’s voice that he should have held out for double.

There were 3 lorries waiting when Johnny walked into the yard. It was bitingly cold and the drivers all sat huddled in their cabs. The meat truck from yesterday was still there too. Johnny spent a second wondering where Lee was, then shrugged. He was probably shacked up with some bird. It’s not like he’d get the sack, good forklift drivers were hard to come by.

Johnny got on with the work. It was routine drudgery, forking pallets off the trucks and stacking them inside the warehouse at the back of the store. He should have been able to empty his mind and think about the dream from last night, but his left hand stung like a bastard. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was right across the palm and the steering wheel rubbed it. The wind soon picked up and a thin drizzle began to fall. Even though it was barely mid-afternoon the light already seemed to be fading.

By the time Johnny had finished with the first two loads the turning knob on his steering wheel was smeared with his blood. The last driver waiting had a sour face that had only looked more and more pissed off as he watched the other trucks leave. Johnny got out of the forklift to stretch his back. The driver gave him a dirty look and said something guttural. Johnny squared up to him. ‘Look, mate, there’s only me. And I need a minute. So you’ll have to fucking wait.’ The driver said something louder but equally foreign. Johnny held his hands up.

‘Wait. You. Need. To. Fucking. Wait,’ he said slowly. ‘And. Learn. To. Speak. English,’ he added in a louder voice. The driver had an insolent smirk on his face. He looked straight at Johnny who felt his muscles tense, ready for a fight. But the man’s gaze drifted to Johnny’s hand, the one with the cut. The driver’s eyes went very wide, showing the bloodshot whites all around the dark little iris. He held his own hands up and shook his head, then backed away slowly and started crossing himself.

Johnny felt adrenalin pulsing round his body, suddenly with nowhere to go.  He wanted the fight. He could picture himself standing over the driver’s body, the foreigner’s face beaten to a bloody pulp. He would reach down and grab his throat and pull. Heat rushed around Johnny’s veins with his blood. He grinned and stepped forwards. The driver only backed off quicker, then turned and ran, disappearing round the front of the truck. The instant he was out of sight, the sweat on Johnny’s forehead turned chill in the wind. He shivered and leaned against the seat of his forklift, waiting for the driver to come and open his truck and complain again. Instead the engine started with a shudder. The lorry pulled away, belching black smoke as the manager walked out.

‘Where’s his load?’ he asked.

Johnny jerked his thumb at the truck. ‘Fucker’s taking off with it.’

The manager started swearing like a trooper and sprinted after the lorry, even though it was already half-way out the yard and there was no chance of him catching it. As it pulled out of the gate he stopped, then walked back over to Johnny.

‘What did he say?’ he asked, panting.

‘I dunno. Didn’t talk fuckin’ English, did he?’

‘Jesus.’ The manager pushed a hand back through his thinning hair. ‘Right, you stay here. I’ll get on to his firm and see if I can get him back.’

‘Sit on my arse on time and a half. Suits me,’ Johnny grinned.

The manager looked like he was going to say something, but he didn’t. Instead he stomped back inside. The blokes in the warehouse were pushing bins of cabbages into the main store. Johnny was left outside by himself. He looked at the meat truck, the only thing left in the yard apart from him and his forklift. He remembered the smell of flowers.

The rear door of a refrigerated lorry should be a tight seal. It had to be to keep the inside chilled, when it was working anyway. Johnny looked around to make sure nobody was watching him, then sniffed at the rubber. And there was a scent, faint but definite. Sweet and sour at the same time. It made him think of rose petals in vinegar and cheap booze. He put his hand on the door handle. Then he remembered the tramp.

* * *

Johnny and Pete had found the tramp when they were kids. It had been a long, hot summer, and the two of them had spent it pissing about round town and in the public swimming pool and up in the woods. Most of all in the woods. They’d both nicked catapults from a shop, daring each other on to do it. Pete’s elder brother gave them tins of ball bearings. He had a real BB gun and he practiced every day with it.

‘Get good with those and you can help if the war comes when you’re still kids,’ he said.

‘What war?’ they asked.

‘Us. Against them,’ he muttered darkly. ‘BNP says it’s coming. Every man has a duty to fight for his race. It’s like a sacred vow, innit?’

Johnny wasn’t interested, but Pete idolised his big brother. He’d shouted at his mother until she let him get a skinhead haircut and bovver boots as well, and he did anything Danny asked. So they went to the woods and practiced shooting at tree trunks and branches. And squirrels and birds too, although neither of them managed to hit a target that was trying to dodge.

It was the smell that had led them to the tramp. They caught a whiff of something foetid and wrong in the summer afternoon breeze, and they followed it like wolves tracking prey. The tramp was lying in a hollow, propped up against a tree. Even in the summer heat he was wrapped up in layer on layer, finished with a filthy parka. A black wool hat was pulled down low, straggles of greasy grey hair escaping from under it and matting together with a filthy beard. To cap it all he was wearing odd shoes, one brown leather boot and one black rubber wellie. The stench rolled around the undergrowth, making them hold their noses and gag when they had to breathe.

‘You fucking stink, you gyppo,’ they yelled at him. The tramp turned his head to look at them, then waved them away. Pete shot a ball bearing into the tree a yard above the tramp’s head, and he flicked the Vs at them. The boys looked at each other. Johnny shook his head and mimed puking and Pete nodded. They scarpered back to clean air.

The tramp hadn’t moved when they went back the next day. They shouted and shot more ball bearings, but this time he didn’t look at them and the smell was worse. Pete told his dad who called the rozzers, and the two boys led a pair of tit-helmeted constables through the trees. They watched as the policemen walked closer to the tramp, then shouted, then called something on their radio. One of them leaned forwards and puked between his feet. About twenty minutes later two paramedics arrived, forcing a stretcher between the brambles encroaching on a path. They dropped the stretcher low, then leaned down and hoisted the tramp up by his knees and shoulders, with the cops helping.

It looked like part of the tramp’s wellie boot fell off as they wheeled him away. Nobody seemed to notice, so the lads went to have a look when the hollow was empty. It wasn’t his boot, though. It was half of his foot. The skin was black and peeling, with maggots crawling between the toes. Little white bones glistened on the end. His whole leg had been rotting and stinking, festering black and all swollen and shining like rubber. Pete turned away in disgust, but Johnny had stood and stared, mesmerised by the vivid colours of decay.

* * *

The cloying smell of flowers surrounded Johnny. He couldn’t remember if he was a nine year-old boy or a twenty-two year-old man. His left hand was stinging. It was gripping something tightly. A handle. There was a choking sound from behind him. Things swung into focus. Here and now Johnny was holding the handle of the back door of the meat truck. The door was open. The truck was full of rotten meat and something else. Flowers? It looked like flowers, black and red and grey roses laid out like a cross on the burst packages of meat. For a second it was perfect beauty. Then the smell turned foul.

Johnny’s eyes watered in the reeking air. He wiped the tears away and now he saw clearly. Lee lay spread-eagled on the rotting meat. He was naked. His stomach was opened. Grey and black loops of bowel lay across him like ropes in a bondage game gone wrong. His neck was gone, ripped away to expose his spine, glinting white beneath the jaw. His crotch was gone too, just a red void left between his legs.

The choking sound came from behind Johnny again. He turned around to see the manager trying to say something. He kept trying to get it out over and over but the words died in his throat each time.