Gaspin'

Not even the gravel sounded the same anymore. The familiar and comforting crunch replaced with the warning of approaching danger. Its tiny sonic resonations feeling like they carried on for miles, warning all of your presence in a twenty-mile radius, your heart trampolining several times into the back wall of your throat. You never walked straight anymore, always crouching close to the earth less man than beast, lest you wish to be caught in the sight of unwelcome presences. And the rasping.

The constant, fuckin’, rasping. Making your voice as cracked and grating as the neglected earth you strode upon, in the rare instance in which you would have someone to speak with. Like the failing heartbeat of a dying world. The weight of the wee cylinder strapped to your leg or your belt, constantly wearing down the weary, even more so after successive days of little sustenance. The feeling of constriction on your face as the rubber starts to dig in like, feeling like broken glass against the skin. The elastic digging into your neck yet another reminder of the impending suffocation. There was no more worrying about babysitters, parking tickets, dinner reservations, bicycle hires, credit card debt, reclining two-piece sofa suites, standing orders or which-tie-goes-with-what shirt conundrums any longer. Someone had pulled the plug. Only death, fear and pain remained.

All the movies and the end of the world predictions were wrong. There was no great alien race sent to exterminate us like an intergalactic fly swatter. The oceans had not yet begun to reclaim the earth although they were more than on their way. Earthquakes had not torn the earth asunder, twain in two. A great biblical flame had not arrived, fanned by the furious flames of a displeased deity, consuming all in its searing path. Disease or infection had not reduced man to his base composition, a jittering, shuddering, flea-ridden beast hungering only for flesh, slowly enveloping the earth as we knew it. It was merely a simple manner of the air having run out. The earth had not so much suffered a great reckoning, as it had only a great forgetting.

The rich fled to every corner of the earth before realising their pursuit was a fruitless venture. They hunkered down underground, locked inside for the remainder of their natural lives like rats in a scientist’s test chamber. Everyone else fended for themselves. Untold suffering and misery. Sacrifices too numerous to mention. The weak fold first. Then those that continue struggling onwards have to live with the mental scarring. Clawing at the corners of your brain every fuckin’ day. Lashing out from the darkest recesses of your mental faculties. The screaming. The pleading. The begging, the bartering, the beckoning.

Junkie John was lucky because Ira had died long before all this shite. Her cheery disposition and childlike innateness would have rendered her at increasing odds with the reality which had enveloped the lives of all. John was thankful for that. He found himself at the crumbled remains of what was once (in the distant reaches of the 1970s) Glasgow East End’s pride and joy, the Meat Market. It would strike one as odd how close the slaughterhouse was to the houses only a street over, as though such savagery was only reserved for the dark and unseen corners of the Scottish countryside. Now it nestled into every crevice in sight. A scorched earth or one under alien occupation seemed a welcome alternative to its current state, dust strewn and forgotten like a child’s favourite toy left to gather dust.

The great green arches of the former factory lay forgotten, sticking out of the grass growing in a bid to reclaim their great forms to the earth. Houses lay half-built from an all too late effort to rejuvenate the area by building housing, lying empty husks like the men who remained and still roamed the hallowed earth. Everything was up for grabs. The whole planet was like a charity shop sale with a five-finger discount applied. Money became absolutely fuckin’ worthless like in the Weimar Republic. And much like then, you were more cost effective using it for making a fire than you were being actually being daft enough to try and spend it. You were literally better off using it to wipe your arse with, as it served no greater purpose. Now it was booze, fags, gold, gas tanks, masks, food, water or fuck all. And even then, people would rip the arse out of you with the pricing. If you were stupid enough to use a tank to barter with you had to have it hidden well and good, or you’d have been robbed on your way to whichever gang you planned to sell it to. The Meat Market was a good route because it provided a route to the canals beneath the Clyde for respite, while also steering clear of the Royal Infirmary which had a high concentration of gangland leaders and their henchmen guarding the greatest source of tanks this side of the city, but Glasgow Airport was on complete lockdown.

Junkie John had pulled and moved all his days in furniture removal, and despite joking that the strength gained from such a pursuit would leave him better equipped for an end-of-the-world scenario, it in-fact did quite the opposite. A dodgy leg from years of heft left him hobbled and disjointed, his form bloated from years of drinking and smoking, and his back stood in a ridged hump. He’d been a benefit cheat as well, but the taxman wasn’t chasing you anymore was he? Before the end he had been a junkie. There had always been that joke:

Wit two hings survive the end a the wurld? (What two things survive the end of the world?)

Junkies and cockroaches.

Junkies and cockroaches. All that seemingly remained.

John kissed the locket around his neck for good luck before he ventured within.

Darkness was drawing near as he continued onwards. Scuttling along the disturbed earth and clambering like a regressed ape, he paused atop a mound of rubble and listened closely. A breaking tree branch or misplaced boot within thirty metres was fair game to John at this point, as finely tuned with his surroundings like some form of monk of the wasteland. His biblical counterpart come to life, scavenging the ravaged wastes for honey and locusts. Any sound was the difference between struggling onwards for another day and being face down in a ditch, face blue from strangulation like a ripened, juicy berry.

The real trick was being able to hear accurately over the incessant whine of the tank, the Darth-Vader inhales drowning out most of the noise. You can achieve a sense of zen wherein the ragged breaths become white noise and is blocked out completely. John attempted to attain this state of mind. But he did not reach it.

Toppling down the mound backwards, John’s back slammed against the earth with a thud as the air driven to his lungs caused his mask to steam up like a shower window. His eyes met those of an unnerving vagabond perched above him, curious and child-like. He carried a rusted pipe and motioned with it slowly, between John’s tank and its thin veinous connecting tube. John nodded slowly in defeat. He spoke at last:

“Wit huv yee goat?” (What have you got?)

“Wit dae ye want?” (What do you want?)

“Wit is it. Geez it. A know yeev goat somethin’.” (What is it. Give me it. I know you’ve got something.)

“Ave goat fuck all mate, a swear.” (I’ve got fuck all mate; I swear.)

John shot him an earnest I-swear-to-fuck-I’m-telling-the-truth grin, masked by his plastic visor.

His pipe came across the gold link chain around the bank of John’s neck and startled to pull with excitement, the vigour causing him to choke and splutter. He relented.

“It’s no mine to gee, a swear. It’s ma wife. Please.” (It’s not mine to give, I swear. It’s my wife. Please.)

“Wit?” (What?)

“Aye, it’s a photae. It’s Aw a’ve goat left. Please mate. Please.” (Yes, it’s a photo. It’s all I’ve got left. Please mate. Please.)

“That gold’s worth a pretty penny these days. Tell ye wit. Geez it. Or a’ll cut that wee lifeline a yours, right there”.

He mentioned again ever so slightly at the tube with a tiny rapping three times in succession. John reluctantly removed the chain, pursing his lips in pain all the while. His shaking hand placed it in the strangers outstretched palm.

“Cheers, big man. And good luck!”

He strode away hollering maniacally. Scraping the sharpened edge of the pipe threateningly on the earth like a child would have chalk on a playground. John sobbed. Like a forgotten child. He rolled over on to his knees and wept into his grimy knuckles for minutes. Precious minutes. Wasting precious air with his bawling. He turned up his tank. In a blind rage, he brought himself to his weary feet and stormed after his unknown assailant.

He could barely make him out in the distance through the darkness, his hulking back of his form bobbing and weaving through the ruins of what was once the Gallowgate, covered in abandoned useless vehicles. Rubbish littered the roads, without mentioning the corpses of the freshly and not so freshly strewn dead, their skin almost opaque from discoloration. He was heading towards where the hulking Barrowlands Ballroom stood dilapidated, their fluorescent lights flickering like the eyes of the fighter laying on the mat. The show isn’t over yet, but everyone’s already left.

In the old world, John would have screamed “HAWL YOU” or “GEEZ THAT BACK YA DICK” but in the world of today the only option was his heaving breathing filtering through the tank. Each sharp inhalation costing him precious seconds of airtime. Crouched like a tiger and advancing slowly, he slowly poised to strike. Tearing at the fiend’s left ankle downwards from behind with both arms gripped tightly left him face down on the dusty tarmac, the plastic of his mask tearing apart with a scrape and a crack. With all the expertise of an amateur wrestler John snakes his way up the man’s back and pulls his head back by his red hair, placing a grip on his exposed mask.

“Wit’s this mate? Ye want this, aye? Ye need this, aye?”

John let loose a terrifying howl rendered muffled by the plastic prison containing his snarling mouth. He let loose a terrible grunt with each smash as he forced the fiend’s forehead to collide with the ground.

“AM. TAKIN’. BACK. WIT’S. MINE. DICK. ALRIGHT? IT’S. NOT. YOURS.”

The fiend rolled over and John still perched atop him. Reigning down a flurry of fists as the fiend’s palm begins pushing at his mask. While holding him with one arm, the other snakes downwards and tears at the tube allowing the fiend to breathe.

The oh-so-familiar process.

Eyes red.

Breath hallowed.

Skin blue.

Frozen. In time. Forever more.

For good measure John tore the visor from his shattered face, in an over dramatic movie fashion.

He undid the clasp on the neck of the freshly created corpse. The locket lay clutched in his sweaty palm, the metal warming from the heat of his hand. He placed it to his forehead and kissed in tenderly before returning it to its rightful place, on his neck where it pressed against the tube that could sever him from this world so easily.

He pressed onwards.

Written by Cameron Cairns

Please note that the use of brackets was employed in order to render any parts of the Glaswegian dialect of Scotland difficult to understand decipherable to non-native speakers and their use was omitted when direct translation seemed more applicable.