Walking through Kelburn Primary School playground on what seems like the morning after fireworks night. Boys still putting lit rockets into the spaces between recycling bins and parked cars and throwing in firecrackers. Police tape cordoning off areas and the air is fresh and humid (as if after morning rain). I can't help but think about how I could be blinded by a firework and consider as I leave the busy playground (surprisingly unharmed) down a flight of tight steps that I would study martial arts to exact my sightless revenge if that was in fact the case-
I am walking to Aye Dubya's flat. Street is cluttered with junk, rusted shopping trolleys and such. Pass a guy and he shouts about "Jack!" or something. I realise this is weird. I pass a flat and David Beckham's face is visible at a porthole window and I note he has styled, gelled up hair. Sort of say "Alright?", thinking (or out loud?) that we are neighbours. Next I know he's out their flat carrying some stuff - now his hair is cropped tight in to his head and he's buffed and oiled wearing tiny pants and I feet defeated internally by his excellent physical shape - though also thinking to myself, "at least put some clothes on!" As he turns away from me his buttocks are exceptionally tight as he struts by. I ask him if he needs help moving and for a split second Victoria Beckham's face flashes through my mind in a dark sepia.
Aye Dubya has a ground floor corner flat, a painted tenement, jet black at foot level then white above. Crushed white with black gravel path. No keys on my keyring - removed/hidden/lost? - as I have been or am on holiday? Hear voices coming from inside, Aye Dubya and what sounds like a girl laughing. Think should I text him I'm here or just leave?-
I decide to go. Getting darker now. As leave walk up to street level there is a path sloping down to the flat. See a guy there, his legs stretched wide apart, an older man like John Byrne in a dark suit. Think, should I help him...? Getting closer I realise the back leg he is actually dragging ends in a hook which is caught on the ground.
Hurrying away now and happen to come up behind a woman. She turns her hatted head and the look she gives me - really only her eyes are visible due to her hat pulled low and high furred collar - is so sneering and somehow upsetting. Tight alley street so I push past and actually carelessly bump an old lady out of the way in doing so. Trying to rush but aware am carrying 3 bursting card folders of Ay Jay Ess's Khaki Shorts colour drawings and sketches which I am sure I am shedding carelessly as I dash. Cannot seem to outpace the woman and am conscious she is always close behind me. Bustle to cross a road singing Nirvana's 'On A Plain' (both as some sort of confidence boost and as a means to define myself as different from everyone else) when I hear her say, "Don't I know you?" Her voice is slow and drawled - frightening when she speaks. I turn-
She is very tall dressed like the Howl's Moving Castle character a bit, but her face is not beautiful like I thought earlier but kind of dried and contorted and ugly, collapsed a bit and sort of a brown skinned husk. She looms imposing and frightening. I cannot think of when we've met. She is pulling a little wheely suitcase on a sort of leash. "Didn't we meet on holiday?", she says-
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