Manchester Gravel

It’s been raining now for a lot longer than 40 days and nights. The exact number dances and skips around my head but my mind’s not nimble enough to catch it anymore. Once lost, the precision of time can’t be restored. I calculate from the depletion of my supplies it’s been approximately two and half months since the evacuation.  Routine is a discipline that must be maintained in order to keep track of the time. Daylight no longer exists, just shades of darkness. Petroleum skies on umbered water.

It was his own instinct Jonathon could never reconcile so he let his actions haunt him. After all instinct is a reaction. A riposte to the present where split-second decisions dance with the hand of fate. And it’s the human condition to spend most of our time in the past and future — and to surrender free will when we least want it.

She lives in the country and every day commutes by train to the city for work. Each morning she rushes on the station platform like a black unicorn, just as the train departs. She steps onto the quickening regional service and deftly finds an empty seat to curl up in and sleep the hour journey there and back, like she’s greedy for lost sleep. She even sleeps through the train stops. Every night she wakes just before her stop like it’s a regular alarm bell.

Louie remembered alighting the plane feeling tired and a bit woozy. It was the multiple nightcaps that sat behind his eyes. He could feel his eyes were bloodshot and cheeks were puffy — the Grey Goose as well as the cabin pressure and mild dehydration.

The game was of no consequence. JSA rooball, under 8’s northern league. There were no finals, no competition ladder, teams were arbitrary colours and divisions and rosters determined by postcode. Play limped up the far side of the ground. The field was marked with bright plastic sports cones inside the painted white lines for local league matches later in the day.

I clean out my msg inbox while waiting at my stop across from Pizza Express on the corner of Lapwing Lane. I do it ruthlessly. It’s my meditation when waiting for the bus or friends. I come across the last message I sent to my dad: ‘Do we spell skepticism with a K?’ ‘No C,’ dad replied. Lead snakes squirm in my belly. I beat the serpents down with hickory of stolid ancestry. I don’t delete the msg. I don’t …

Her heart fastened to the surfer curls of the server. She was sure he surfed. He was probably a vegetarian, maybe even a vegan too. She had a gift for knowing (things about) people so she didn’t need to test how accurate her instinct was.

He held his spoon in a fist, like his granddad. It felt right. He was digging into his food, which seemed to be the point of a spoon. And it was way more practical than how his parents instructed that he hold it – between his thumb and forefinger like an upside-down pencil. His dad corrected him until he was nine.

Under new entreaties for reconciliation and consolidation, where the other had long since mattered, Gerry remained resolute had the last bullet in the chain jammed, or had he not plugged the back of the enemy he would be dead.

Bill looked down at his plate and touched his knife and fork together. He surprised himself by how little he’d eaten. Sausages were the limit of his wife’s cooking ability – sausages, potato gems and frozen beans. And Bill gave the sausages most the credit in the exchange with his wife.

He heard the shower running when he woke up. He hoped she wouldn’t use all the water and then felt bad for thinking it. The feel of toast milling between his teeth slightly alleviated his mood. She sat silently with a face full of blame. He ate three slices, taking care with each bite…

The store started to flow. Middle-management on stolen lunch breaks toss half smoked cigarettes away at the door, snatch extra large take-away bags off the counter for the team back at the office and already have stuck another fag in their mouths before exiting.

Max stood at the restaurant’s dispensing station nearest the main entrance on the corner of Oxford Road and Portland Street. People use to call him Maxwell or Mr Hinkley, which he preferred. It was a professional courtesy and he liked it. It set him apart.

Christian Christian Senior strolled into McMahon Sports Bar either unaffected or unaware of his lateness. His punctuality or lack thereof was commonly known and easily tolerated by his wife and embraced by friends because he was such a damn charismatic fellow.

Lunagirl sees the boys are far from the lads they’re pretending to be and the men they want to be. But sympathy is not cheap in this town.

Lunagirl knew it was an apology of sorts, albeit unspoken, after being abandoned on the first day they met – even though Lunagirl stopped feeling abandoned a long time ago. Rainfish said it was a surprise. But to pass the time as they headed up the back of Alexander Park he started telling her about One-Legged Keith, which to Shades, sounded more like warning.

Lunagirl couldn’t see if Rainfish vanished into the puddle, or the puddle swallowed him. Liquid and solid masses seemed to connect somewhere just off the ground. A gutter of embrace and Rainfish was gone. The puddle fell back down to its apathetic state in the shadows.

Lunagirl’s khaki canvas rucksack is strapped like a Neolithic shield to her back. It bounces along with her through the drizzle as they head south on Princess Parkway and onto Wilbraham Rd.

Before Lunagirl has time to react Rainfish has her arm like a leash. ‘Come-n’ – We carn’t slow down. Fouk’it Shades. Don’t stop.’ That’s what Rainfish called Lunagirl – Shades, on account she always wore turtle blue sunglasses. To her mother Lunagirl was Jane.

She sits alone by the coffee shop window. On her table is an espresso, a small beaker of milk and a clear glass of hot water that condenses around the rim. A cigarette in her right hand burns a silk scarf of smoke into the air.