Assault

It is an active decision.

As far as I can make out, there are no other contributing factors to this state. I have no psychiatrist and no record. I am well-paid and my boss thinks the sun shines from my well-exercised arse. I am thrice-divorced and my kids still speak to me. I am only thirty-four but my first and second marriages were way too early.

It is an active decision. I will hate every single being I come into contact with. It will be spread like honey across a toasted muffin, liberally and equally. Not quite equally. The more love they try to give me, the more I will hate. The more innocent they are, the more will be my disgust and violence. It will be a true feeling all the more because it is an active decision. From my insubstantial gut leading up and puking out my eyes to the forms of contact: the target of everything. Sympathy is a weakness. Empathy is a weakness. I am not even looking for blood, catharsis, revenge or pleasure. It is, quite simply, an active decision. The target of everything.

The girl in front of me has hair the colour of an overcast day – a solid white base stroked through with acts of dark grey. She plays with a left earring that dangles and spangles close to her left shoulder. Insubstantial shoulder. If both of them were taken into account, you would see: thin and malnourished they tremble taper into a waist of branch-like possibility, ready to snap and be thrown on the fire. My patience is little but that is part of the decision. I have no more impatience than the next man. The overcast glare moves past my right shoulder and it is my turn. I am entering something. My patience is little. I ask the clerk is she values her job. She is an old woman. Not old, but older than me. Her hair is not overcast but her face is. It is a mess of confusion. Not old, but older than me I am fed up with the repetition we are engaged in. I lean my face into the glass and there is alarm dispersing her wrinkles. Soggy fingers. Wriggling worms trying to reach a hidden red button under a desk built too big for her. To have these wrinkles to disperse, she must have a certain number of years. Otherwise, it is a hard life. A dead husband? Gone-off putty or Play-Doh and her grey strip of lips refuses the answer. No need. It is not a question that requires an answer. We both know it. The overcast female has blown out into the rain. Her summer colours are shimmering across the street. To have sunshine and rain in the same afternoon. And hate as the... the what? The axis? My jeans are wet but my jacket is waterproof. My jeans are wet because my jacket is waterproof. Shit off a shovel. It has funnelled the rain straight to the inches below my crotch. I could have pissed myself for all they know. Incontinent. But who do I relay this news to? Who can I find to sue on a day like this? To court in court when rain and the sun and my hate are forming this triptych of my decision? There is no-one. There is more to life than legalities. The old lady is desperately trying to wrinkle out a smile and the phone I grip tight in my waterproof pocket is silent. The only ones who ring are the PPI claims specialists. They are specialists at ringing my phone. Today they have deserted me. My bank card feels like Braille and it kisses friction against my silent phone as I place it through the glassless rectangle to the terrified hand. Terror happens in all these insubstantial situations. Who am I to say whether she's wet herself or not. Pale and smooth where her trembling wedding ring used to gnaw into the fat. Perfect lines to denote the years. Almost like a tree trunk. Almost. Widowed or divorced, I think to ask her when she takes my card and looks at the signature that has become nothing but a stain. And then I do ask her.
“Widowed or divorced?” I say.

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I am escorted away from the weeping by four hands of hate that are magnified in black gloves. It is like they planned to commit murder. They hiss and they steam but they do it all in their terrific silence, afraid of my right to sue. This silent phone in my pocket is like a loaded gun. I am floating into robbery and am lifted fingertips deep into my moistured armpits. When the door closes I am back in rain. The bitch still has my card but I know from the way they gripped me that they must be her sons. Their father is dead and the rain hisses and steams and funnels into my crotch. I rush to cover across the street – a pound shop where everything is priced above a pound. Lots of primary, solid colours through this window and a whiff of summer. Faces are content and listless. Their hands are full of phones. Their enlarged fingers can barely configure their thoughts into glowing keypads and whistling noises. Far off a wheelchair hums an electric lullaby to a crying child or a deranged adult. I find I am rejoined by the lady I have told myself I will hate the most. It is my decision which has led to this reunion. Her dread is palpable, to put it blandly. Her hair moves into the sky, the sky moves into her hair. Sometimes it is so hard to tell the two apart. Like years of ineptitude and the festering of a successful life. Her eyes are any colour that summer is. A dress that is empty of content, not unhappy. My own eyes are drops of rain shot into the black dye of mud. Two imperfect circles moving up and down and staining her dry dress because she moves through the rain like it doesn't exist.

When I move to touch her, she cowers. When I go to touch her, the four hands in their black gloves grip across the large gold bar that simulates our wealth, that leads us to the abused clerk. Their strength is one that will pull the bar from its foundations and have it whistling into my skull. They want to burst out and rush through the drops on drops on drops and have their own crotches funnelled as they commit bodily harm. They want all this, but they have received the same dry texts on their own dry phones. They are magnificently attuned to the ways of the world. They take care of their mother the bank-teller. Each a corner of an amateur bodyguard. They take care of her as a joke to a family-run business that sucks them all dry. She is the stricken matriarch who is left with cancer for company and one less man at the door. He is the one running across the street, through the rain, and assaulting the woman who was lovely and insubstantial in a dress meant for summer.

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