Habit E-Book

Stephen McGeagh

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 225

Beschreibung

Now a major motion picture Manchester, the present. Michael divides his time between the job centre and the pub. A chance meeting with Lee, an introduction to her 'Uncle' Ian, and a heavy night on the lash lead to a job working the door at a Northern Quarter massage parlour. After witnessing the violent death of one of the 'punts', Michael experiences blood-drenched flashbacks and feels himself being sucked into a twilight world that he doesn't understand but that is irresistibly attractive. When he eventually finds out what goes on in the room below 7th Heaven, Michael's life will never be the same again. Think Bret Easton Ellis. On a writing break in the north of England. And all he packed was Fight Club and some early Stephen King novels. Stephen McGeagh's powerful debut will stay with you for a long time.

Leseprobe

Habit

Manchester, the present. Michael divides his time between the job centre and the pub. A chance meeting with Lee, an introduction to her ‘Uncle’ Ian, and a heavy night on the lash lead to a job working the door at a Northern Quarter massage parlour.

After witnessing the violent death of one of the ‘punts’, Michael experiences blood-drenched flashbacks and feels himself being sucked into a twilight world that he doesn’t understand but that is irresistibly attractive. When he eventually finds out what goes on in the room below 7th Heaven, Michael’s life will never be the same again.

Think Bret Easton Ellis. On a writing break in the north of England. And all he packed was Fight Club and some early Stephen King novels. Stephen McGeagh’s powerful debut will stay with you for a long time.

Praise for Stephen McGeagh

‘The message, if there is one, seems to be that only those at the top and bottom of society’s food chain can abandon conventional morality, those who have nothing to gain by adhering to social mores or lose through abandoning them, though here, for Michael and the others, ultimately that doesn’t turn out to be the case. Not so much a horror story as misery memoir etched on human flesh and with blood red trim, this is a powerful first appearance from a young writer who will bear watching.’ —Peter Tennant, Black Static Magazine

‘A raw slice of urban menace as immediate as a dangerous night out on the town. In the vivid language of the streets it invokes the paranoid spirit of the city. It’s as harsh and clear as neon, and it rings alarmingly true. Be warned — this is not comfortable fiction. Perhaps there’s no escape.’ —Ramsey Campbell

Habit

Stephen McGeagh was born in Liverpool in 1981, and moved to Manchester a few years later. He studied English at MMU, before returning as a postgraduate to their Writing School. Habit is his first novel.

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Copyright © Stephen McGeagh, 2012, 2013

The right of Stephen McGeagh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2012, 2013

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978 1 84471 980 8 electronic

For Laura

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

Acknowledgements

1

The kid on the pavement, eyeballing me, spits as the bus sets off. I’m sat on that seat on the bottom deck. Over the back wheels. High enough. Scanning down to the driver, checking who’s getting on and off. Sat there because when she gets on I’ll be able to scope her out again. Well nice. Fit as.

I’m on my way to sign on a couple of weeks ago, hung-over like a motherfucker, in this very seat, and she gets on. Shows her pass and walks down the aisle to find somewhere to sit and all I can think is I hope she can’t smell my breath because she’ll probably fucking die if she can, and how pretty is she?

I pull my hood up a bit more because we’re about to get to her stop and I don’t want her to clock me and think I’m trying to get a look at her again. Just so happens this is dole day. Yeah, I always get the bus at this time, what of it? Least my head’s clear today. Couldn’t have a drink or anything last night because I went to see Mand and she kept me there for ages and made me some tea. Watched some right shit on the telly, stuck the washing machine on with a bagful in there, brewed up, hung the washing up. I was too bored to have a beer by then. Bare knackered just watching her. Kipped there and everything. Fair enough though. What’s your big sister for if not to wipe your backside? Tell her that and she’d proper belt me. The bus turns right and brakes. Just outside the shops and that bird’s not even at the stop. What a waste of my time.

The day is shit. The rain drops are leaving dirty, greasy, streaks on the windows and people are racing around outside, taking big steps over puddles. We pull up at the next stop and an old woman hobbles up to the driver, unzips the top of her shopping trolley and starts rooting around for a purse or a pass or something. I can see the people in the queue behind her wishing they’d got on first and not tried to look good by being polite and letting the old girl on. There’s no shelter at the stop and one woman, who put her brolly down when she saw the bus, starts to put it back up again. Her face is hard and I can see the slag-line of make-up round her chin from where I’m sitting so it must look like a fucking orange cliff close up. She gets her leopard-print umbrella back up then the queue starts to move so it’s down again and her black eyes follow the old bird down the aisle. Wonder if you put them in a room together right now, door locked, no consequences, what would hard face do? I reckon nothing. People love looking angry. We cane it off again at a breakneck twenty and I can see the gym that used to be a bingo hall that used to be a cinema looking across the traffic island that marks the start of Sale town centre. The island’s got a footpath across it, some grass and bushes, but the green on them is off. Dirty like the windows. I wipe the inside of the glass with my sleeve and it comes back wet and cold. I get off next so I ring the bell and quickly get past the old bird who’s getting up – one stop for fuckssake – and wait for the doors to open. The rain’s gone off a bit but I can hear it on my hood when I step down onto the pavement. The courts are on my left and I walk to the crossing. It’s got red brick ramps on the sides and dark windows, cigarette bins on every bit of wall, cigarette ends on the floor underneath covered in dabs of spit. I still want to run up the ramps, chase Mand up and back down, up and down, shitting it in case someone comes out and drags us in to see a judge. Need to get a grip of that. Not a kid now.

Not bothered with a green man today, the road’s pretty quiet so I get over onto the pedestrian bit quick. First there’s a load of estate agents, all huddled together on the edge of the main set of shops. I never understood how so many can go on, all put up against each other. I can smell roast chicken coming from a butcher’s a bit further on. The precinct slopes up a hill to the met stop and after a bit I get past Boot’s and I’m at the next crossing and I’m surrounded by banks. On my way to the bank. Sort of. Mand reckons her rent is well too high but she pays it because she doesn’t want to drop off the radar. Taking every hour they’ll give her at work just to keep a tiny house, on a shitty road. She says I’m dropping off. Dig and me got it sussed ages ago. Rent free over his uncle’s shop. No heating, no cash, no problem. The crossing is waiting for me at the top end, green all the way to the other side, and I give a girl in a Mini a nod while she’s waiting at the lights. I hear her speed off when I get across, probably giving me the finger. The tram stop’s just at the top of the hill, waiting for me with its new yellow signs. They were all about grey and green at first. I even think I can remember when trains still went down these tracks but that might be something my brain’s made up. A false memory. In the paper they said your best memories from being a kid are probably lies. The stuff you try to hang onto when things are getting the most fucking raw and you can’t see past your own screaming – oh, by the way, that stuff never happened. Over the road, still on the hill but opposite the tram, is the town hall and round the corner there’s a library and a theatre that I’ve never been to, and I only know that they’re there anyway because they’re next to pubs. I duck into the tram station and go past the ticket machines on my way down the pigeon-shit-covered steps to the empty platform.

The rain slides off the sloped roof on the opposite side and down onto the rocks and rubbish all over the tracks. I can see a few battered papers down there, that must get dropped when people squeeze themselves onto the proper hammered trams in the early morning. Mand says you can’t breathe on there sometimes. When it’s winter and wet, and no one wants to crack a window, especially not some fucker who’s already got a seat and doesn’t want the wind to whip past his headphones; when it’s like that she says you can’t breathe and the air is thick like blood. You choke on there, she reckons. A tram glides into the station on it s way to town, on the other platform, not my way. A girl is sitting in the back half, so she’s travelling backwards, and she keeps staring at me as the thing moves off. I wipe my nose with my sleeve. The grey day means the trams have their headlights on, so I know there’s one coming as it’s easy to spot in the distance. On the green metal bench by the wall behind me there’s another old girl messing with her bag, scrabbling about for something like mad. Her hands are dipping in and out, scratching like chicken’s feet, and she’s muttering some weird shit.

‘Where’s my pass?’

She’s asking me, because there’s no one else about. The noise from the road back up the stairs has gone. I walk a bit further down the platform and lean out at the edge a bit to check if the tram’s any closer. Nearly here.

‘I had it just there, with my purse and my letters.’ She starts to get up.

I keep walking, backwards, facing her but watching the tram pull in.

‘How am I going to get around without it?’ She shakes her head and turns towards the stairs.

I press the button to open the doors seven times before anything happens, then I get on and sit up near the front and pull the strings of my hood so it’s tight around my face.

Two women get on and sit behind me. I can see them reflected in the glass panel on the driver’s cabin in front of me. They smell like wet cigs. One of them looks older than she probably is, and her face is angry.

‘I’d feel sorry for them, but they’ve always got to have about six kids. Who needs six kids?’

The younger-looking one screws her face up like she’s smelt shit.

‘I know, poor little bastards. Born into that arsehole, and it’s only going to get worse now for them.’ She’s got long hair, tied up, and she’s got a mole on her neck.

‘Ah fuck them. What can you do?’ Older crosses her arms over her chest. ‘Seen those pictures of our Reece’s little ‘un? Doesn’t she look like him?’

The dole office is only about ten minutes away, on the edge of Altrincham, but the rain makes it seem further. The women bob in and out of my view in the glass and the tram bounces along the track, and I keep losing the conversation because of the sound of the rails outside. I get my phone out of my pocket and mash the numbers with my thumb to make the back-light come on without unlocking it. 11:02 and no messages. I’ve got a picture of some bird and her fake tits as my wallpaper. The operator logo cuts right across her face so I can’t tell if she’s pretty or not, I can’t see her eyes. I don’t know how it even got there. Maybe Dig did it. I unlock the keypad and press through to my saved messages. There’s one, and I read it slowly then tuck my phone back inside my jacket. When I look up the two women have gone and all the seats behind me in the carriage are empty.

The tram slows down and stops and the doors slide open and the platform is empty but I can see someone standing in the doorway of the newsagents, down the far end. There’s a bike locked up on the railings, a proper shitty one that no one would steal if it wasn’t locked up, and I feel like I want to kick it on the way past. I get past the shop quickly but I’m not quick enough because I hear the man’s voice loud in my right ear.

‘Michael, lad, you all right?’

I don’t answer, just tuck my hands into my sleeves and do a quickstep down the ramp to the road, sort of the kind where you kick your legs that bit faster when you’re walking and you think it’s sped you up, but it fucking hasn’t. I can see the office tower block already in the distance, and it almost makes me turn back, the thought of sitting in there for an hour getting grilled and not having real answers except that I want money for nothing so just fucking give it to me, and no I haven’t applied for those thirty shite jobs you gave me because they wouldn’t take me on if I did, and if they did then I’d fuck it off after a few days because I don’t want to fucking work. Straight up. Some little kid is running around his front garden screaming his fucking head off and banging on the grass and on his wall with a bit of copper pipe but he stops when he sees me walking past and just stares at me.

I’m still a bit away from the job centre doors but I can hear some screaming already. Probably some mad bitch going off her nut about child benefit. I can see a bloke standing outside and his cigarette is just hanging from his hand like he’s forgotten about it, like it’s going to drop half-smoked on the floor any minute. He’s watching the big automatic double doors, and when I get up near him I start watching them too. The shouting hasn’t stopped but I can’t make out the words until the doors slide back and a fat security guard carries out this girl who looks about twelve but she’s raging, kicking out everywhere. Her foot just misses my face as they fall down the path, the guard with his bear hug around her waist bending his head and neck back so he doesn’t get one of her elbows in the gob. They get to the roadside and he dumps her on her arse and steps back quick. She spins round to face him and she’s a mad cat, staring him down.

‘Bastard!’ she screams at him. ‘Bastards!’ she screams at the job centre concrete. The security guard and the building are both quiet, and then he just turns away and walks back inside like nothing happened, like he does it every day. The doors slide shut behind him. The girl spits on the pavement but I can’t see where it lands because the ground’s wet from the rain.

Inside there’s a queue. A few scally lads. A big boy with eyes that don’t point where he wants them to. A girl who looks scared, with a grey coat wrapped all around her, and her hands can’t stop messing in the pockets. There’s an old fella with a face on, sat down, who probably doesn’t even care about the queue. The longer he sits there, the longer it is til he goes home to start crying. I start waiting. One of the lads looks round at me and grins a bit, like they do when they reckon you’re no trouble. He nudges his mate and they both look round then. I look at my boots. They’re black, and dirty, and look dirtier next to the clean green carpet in the centre. When I look up they’re not staring any more. I open my fists. I get to the desk.

‘Name?’

The woman’s a blank. Scraped-back hair and a suit jacket, she’s got her name badge wonky on a bit of string round her neck.

‘Michael Burns. Got a half eleven appointment.’

‘Take a seat. We’ll shout you when we’re ready.’

‘It’s half past now.’

‘Take a seat.’

I do, and it’s uncomfortable, a plastic primary school one. My phone buzzes. A text from Dig.

WEN U HOME. NEED BOGROLL.

The windows in the job centre overlook a staff car park. I don’t know what the offices above this floor are used for but there are a lot of shiny cars with up-to-date plates out there. The rain’s gone off but it sits on the windscreens like blisters and makes them all look diseased. A guy bounces into the waiting room, wearing a grey suit from a supermarket and one leg of his pants tucked into his sock. He looks at everyone, right in the eyes if he can, and holds it till the other person looks away. When he gets to me I pretend like I never saw him come in and keep staring out the window. After a bit, a woman’s voice calling my name makes me look round.

2

When I get out,it’s gone one and it’s started pissing down again so I jog round to the pub on the corner of the main road. The wooden benches on the concrete square outside are dripping and somebody’s left a beer mat out on one that’s turning to mush, next to a blue plastic ashtray that’s a little dirty swimming pool. The glass panel in the front door’s got a massive crack in it and it’s been taped over a few times to hold it together. I push it carefully and step in then pull my hood down and walk across the lounge to the bar. It’s dead quiet. I can hear a man’s voice coming from the telly on the wall, something about someone signing for someone, and there’s just a couple of old fellas in the corner, sitting there sipping smooth, not even talking, not even looking up. Pete, the landlord, is behind the bar, and I want to leave but he’s seen me already.

‘Sit down, Michael. Pint is it?’

‘No, a half.’

I sit on a bar stool that has rips in the red leather cushion.

‘Very funny.’ His face is dead straight and he flicks the pump down and starts the lager pouring out. ‘Must be dole day.’

‘Yep.’

‘And where’s your man, Dick, is it?’

‘Dig.’

‘Right, Dig. Where’s he?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘He made a right fucking mess last time he was in here, Michael.’ The pint pot is full, but he lets it run over a bit to get rid of some head. ‘A right fucking to-do that was.’

‘Yeah, Pete. I know.’

He sticks the glass down in front of me and wipes his hand on the arse of his jeans. One of the old fellas gets up from the corner and moves underneath the telly, close, like he’s straining to see it.

‘You’re all right to come in here you know. You, but not him.’

Pete leans onto the bar and I can see some spilt beer soaking into the elbow of his shirt, but he doesn’t notice or he doesn’t care.

‘Cheers, Pete.’

‘Just make sure he’s aware then, yeah?’

‘Yeah, Pete.’

‘That’s two-ninety.’

I hand over the money and Pete puts it straight in his pocket. Then he turns round and opens the glass-washer to start emptying it. A big cloud of steam comes out and some of it lands on the mirrors on the back of the bar, blocking out my face.

The girl walks in. She looks round and comes straight over when she recognises me.

‘All right?’ Her hair is wet, a bit is stuck to her cheek like someone’s drawn on her face with a brown pen while she was asleep. ‘Get us a drink. I’m freezing.’

‘What?’

‘Vodka and tonic.’ Her eyes are blue.

I order. Pete asks if she’s old enough, then laughs and starts pouring anyway. When he puts it on the bar in front of her, I shift in my seat so it doesn’t look like I don’t want to talk.

‘You saw me getting booted out of the dole before, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah. What did you do?’

‘Fuck all. That fat bastard security guard just wanted a grip of me, I reckon.’ She grins and her teeth are all white, then she takes a long swallow of her drink. ‘I kicked off a bit. But only because they weren’t listening to me.’

‘Right,’ I say because I think she’s stopped, but she hasn’t.

‘Yeah. The fuckers. Make you feel dead small don’t they, in there. I said, I’m not a just a number on your forms, you daft bitch.’ She stands up. She is smaller now then when she was sat on the barstool. ‘And I said, watch this, yeah, make sure this goes on the records, yeah?’ She punches out her arm, quick. I think she probably gets some power behind it. ‘Have this one as well.’ Her skinny leg kicks out and knocks the side of the bar. Pete looks up from his paper. ‘Then that security knob got me and I’m out of there, fast and skint as fuck.’

‘Harsh.’ I don’t think it’s harsh but I nod my head when I say it, then I see that I’ve finished my pint.

‘Yeah, well harsh. Nice that someone gets it.’ She goes back to smiling and she looks at my empty glass. ‘What you doing now?’

‘Going home.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Old Trafford.’

‘I’ll come with you. Mine’s round there.’

I sit for a minute and don’t say anything. She keeps inspecting me, looking me up and down. When I get up and start walking to the door, she downs the rest of her drink and follows me. She walks quick like she needs to stay close to someone, taking fast little steps, and her head’s down. I hold the door open behind me, for her. I can just see her mouth moving when she goes past but she’s not saying anything out loud.

The rain holds off while we’re walking to the tram stop. From the door of the pub, all the way back, she stays behind me, just a step. She speaks in short bursts. Like a machine gun.

‘We paying or jumping it? Because I’ve not got any money. Don’t matter, I suppose. I’ve had fines off it before. Have you? They don’t really chase you for them. Can you hear that? Where’s that coming from?’

My boots hit the pavement in a weird rhythm because I’m dodging snails that’ve come out in the wet. A guy walks towards us and he’s got holes in his trainers and he’s spraying something from a bottle onto his hand and rubbing it on his beard, then he tucks the bottle away, in the pocket of his dirty jacket. Then he does it again. When we go past him, it stinks of aftershave. I don’t think she notices because she just carries on.

‘Fucking hell, I’m starving. Let’s get some food in a bit, yeah? Any takeaways near you? Got any cigs on you? Mike? Mike?’ I feel a crunch under my foot but keep walking.

At the platform, I can’t see any trams coming our way but there’s a few people waiting so there must be one due. The lads who grinned at me in the dole are stood at the far end, looking over and one of them gives me this wave, dead floppy like his hand’s going to come off, and his mate laughs, hard and long up at the sky.

‘Who are they?’ She’s a little bird, turning her head up at me and squinting.

‘No one.’

‘Think they’re taking the piss.’

‘Let them.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you don’t have to.’

I don’t know what she means so I just stare at the sign on the opposite platform that gives you the times of the last trams. I make myself look like I think it’s dead interesting, even if it’s too far away and I can’t read it. We don’t really say anything else until a tram pulls in. She presses the button for the doors and we get on and sit next next to each other, in the back half.

Lee – she tells me her name on the tram – likes to do loads of things. Mostly talk. I can see the bushes at the sides of the track flying past in the wrong direction and it makes me think for a minute that I’m falling into a big green hole, so I have to quickly check behind me just to make sure I’m not and steady myself. Her voice rolls along with the noise in the carriage. If the wheels or the brakes or the air going past outside goes a bit loud then I’ve lost what she’s saying half-way through and it takes me ages to get back to understand what she’s going on about again, she talks that quick. Someone opens a window just as she turns to face me, and she’s curling one of her skinny legs underneath herself and sitting on it.

‘So, what do you reckon?’

I don’t know what she’s asking for.

‘Come on. A night or two.’

I feel like I should ask her to ask me again. But I just say ‘Yeah?’ instead.

She smiles. A big smile of them white teeth, and I can see some little red cracks in her bottom lip.