Jacob awoke to the sound of birds outside his window, as he usually did in the morning. Jacob would lie back and keep his eyes closed for as long as possible, just to imagine his surroundings as a hell of a lot nicer than they would be once he opened his eyes. The grey of the council block would assault his sight and bring him kicking and screaming into the world he hated so much.
As Jacob had grown up he would try to escape to the green in the country at every opportunity possible, his parents barely able to prevent him from running away to the fields and forests that were only an hour away on the train.
This morning he could smell the CO2 in the air, he could almost feel the thick air penetrating the lining of his lungs and leaving a black residue in their wake. The air in Peckham was so dirty that he could blow his nose, and it would come out black, just the way it did after a good night out on the town.
He lay there, waiting for the other sounds to overtake that of the birdsong, and had a strange feeling that he had been there awhile. He must have woken earlier than usual.
Minutes passed and a shiver ran down his spine, he had not heard anything other than the birds singing for what must have been 10 minutes. Where was the traffic? Where was the raucous call of the Market trader down the road? The beeping of the Pelican crossing?
All these things were those that greeted him in the first minutes of waking, reminding him that he was in a hell hole, but none had come yet.
His imagination started to run ahead of him, thinking “if only it is real and I can have fresh air and I can escape the prison of my upbringing, and the care of my Mother.”
Jacobs Mother, Irene, had not set foot outside her front door in the last 30 years. A rare disease had inflamed her spinal cord and rendered it useless, and this became a great source of embarrassment for her, what with the wheelchair, incontinence and colostomy bag. Jacob could understand this, and would never desert her to the social services as long as she lived.
He did love his mother; he just couldn’t afford to get them both out of there.
Jacob had worked as a data entry clerk in an insurance company for the better part of 3 years. He was still a temp, but this just gave him greater flexibility than he would have otherwise been granted. The people there didn’t speak to him unless it was to give him more proposal forms or detail updates to process. Yeah, what a great job!? But he could live with it! It paid for his beer anyway.
Jacob was just trying to pluck up the courage to open his eyes and accept reality, when he heard the noise of empty milk bottles rattling. That noise evoked an old memory somewhere within him, and he kept his eyes closed as he sought through his mind to track down the elusive moment.
It was when he was 12 years old that the milkman had asked him if he wanted any Puff. Of course, he’d asked how much. The price had been good and would be delivered to the door. What else could you ask for?
Jacobs’s milkman, Stan, was the kind of wide-waisted, greasy guy you’d meet in any down market pub. He had brown trousers with tears and worn out patches over the knees. His fingernails were a consistent yellow throughout the summer that Jacob had done “business” with him. The nicotine combining with something unpleasant, to coat the top and the underside of the brittle nails.
Jacob had seen them close up, right next to his face, when Stan had thought it was him that had “grassed” to the police about his illicit little side line. Stan had been arrested, charged on 2 accounts of supplying drugs, and then sacked from his job as a milkman.
Jacob had had to do some pretty quick talking to save himself from casualty that night. Fortunately he had made it through, and he had helped Stan to find the real big mouth.
A 50-something from down the road had been to blame, a Mr. Harrison, a short northern man with crossed eyes, fat legs and a Derbyshire accent. No one knows why he had grassed him up; Stan never took the time to ask the guy why, while he was stabbing him. Besides, logic would dictate he wouldn’t have been able to reply anyway, not with a butterfly knife in his left lung.
Jacob had seen everything, and at 13 by then, he didn’t think it cool at all. He was prepared for a slanging match, not a murder. He did squeal on Stan in the end. He couldn’t take the guilt of informing Stan of who to hit. He had been so naïve, but not again, not ever, he would discipline himself. Of course, that would be after the next joint, just one more you know. One for the road and all that.
Jacob could hear the birdsong once again as his senses drifted back to the present. The squawking faint but there all the same.
Copyright 2014 Adam Bigden
The Indie Collaboration
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DANI J CAILE
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