A Washer For The Wishing Well

Melegsrottenmaytannytstynks

Five unwanted minutes from the blood-red gothic façade of St Pancras Station and four from Boudica’s Battle Bridge, the once whore-riddled and misery smeared after midnight destination of those who cannot stop is Somers Town unwelcome, neglected, and fatigued - both brick and person - in a room that will place in the annual “Least Hygienic Human Habitat 2003,” the group of chemically crippled nutrient deficient social disconnects eagerly await the final unwinding of the grey, frayed, unfit for purpose not better than nothing bandage that will reveal the cause of the stink to beat all other stinks - for there are many other, putrid, growing, festival of bacteria stinks - that tickle nostrils with decay and rancidity which the finger of death has poked.

So bad the stink, put people off the food they did not have and never even dreamed of. Yet this stink, head above the foul odour parapet it did reach and so identified as that which must, if not be dealt with, at least be investigated for lack of fuck all else to fucking do.

A mirage of decrepitude in the desert of self-love, the wound on Nick’s starved gasping throbblestown and angry calf muscle now nearly revealed, with a guess four layers of bandage yet to unwind, those present cover both mouth and nose, to protect not the wound but themselves from what surely would be that which would cause them to puke the food they do not eat. And no one wants puke in an infected wound. In any wound puke is not the answer it’s safe to say. No one wants food. Not around here, not among these failed desolation angels with their jokes that don’t take the edge off being dragged face first across the rasp of every new day that starts at dawn and never ends.

“Sfakinbadman, surtingnawtoo, slykytsgroanyntodabandydge”

“Puh’wort-a onyt. Puh’wort-a onyttall cumoffezah”

Without asking and with much excitement, face-covered arm extended, a mug of cold coffee did upon today’s focus and grotesquery pour, and as the weight of water did bandage sodden fall, so did Nick let out a howl. I saw the worst minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical, fixating on what happens after five thousand too many angry fixes bla bla bla nights of old machinery churning the consumer durables out.

Aghast did Nick look, swirling and fainting in the cold truth of the wind of memories that blew like razors in a motherless storm of no father of care home cock and humiliation stabbed between the ripened rayon sheets onto which he clung as now he clings to his bandage as heads that previously peered in pull back like a lotus flower in a nuclear dawn rotten and disgusted by fascination for decay.

Noticing the four of cups tarot card held to the back of the door by a dart pierced the charred blistered paint that survived an arson attack to burn the place down or smoke out the shameless cowards sticky fingers neighbours lingered yet whose feet sharing the fragile unclean toilet seat as faces through the bathroom window did inhale the polluted city as the polluted city had once inhaled them.

Nick looks for symbolism in the four of cups and finding none hands the bunch of unwound filthy, now coffee moist bloody gangrene bandages to Jane who takes it the grizzly old gauze bouquet of wilted flowers of the death prize as Nick waves his now free hand across the wound to scare the fearless fly scooping meat that loops and scatters before too good to leave sets back down on the wet sour fetid growing death of subcut tissue and muscle fascia and pus, and fungal invasion bacterial cess pit of unclean shit.

Seth picks up a wooden lolly stick and licks off the sweet dusty remains before jabbing it into the sick abyss that having looked at it long enough feels it now look unto his one working eye fears it might kill it and him finally blind him so angrily scrapes with abandon at Nick’s red and yellow and purple and pink and black crispy center eyelike and bleak as the broken winged raven on a starless night the bored and boracic boys stamped on to watch the rainbow of viscera in a taxi headlights illuminate and give them nightmares where they become men.

Nick lets out a scream that fills the ears and room and back again and Seth hooks off the black scab that’s like a page from a burnt bible and the stink is fourfold and pus runs down Nick’s legs both sides rivers of filth dry quick in the airless room among hairs of clotted bacteria. Yellow teeth the few remaining grind and crack and the colour he doesn’t have in his face drains as he falls back in an agony of consequence and all the wrongs he’s done and there’s a few the girl whose virginity he stole in the bins behind the breaker’s yard the face he pushed into a fruit machine oncetwicethrice until the blood flowed so free it short-circuited the cash magnet landlord comes stomping giantlike angry boots and swings but Nick’s brass knuckles repeated rabbit punch breaks zygomatic maxilla lacrimal ethmoid sphenoid palatine rearrangement “Eeenevalookedtsamwyrlyaferat” said the mutton dressed as mutton trouts that sunk beers and farted on not even trying faux leather barstools and sucked cocaine cock in the steamy ammonia bogs for ten quid.

“Smoovyn!Smoovyn! Sfukynmagotsyndare!”

“Magotswear?”

“Toweeksanyelbeded. Sgangreneorsummynkanyedsortyn.”

As all lean forward, nose and mouth covered again, weeping wound and blood is thicker than pus and pus is thicker than the terrified and salty sweat that’s somehow keeping Nick alive or so it seems as Seth stands up and to the kitchen walks, snatches a crisp stark and apparent on a draining board and tastes cheese and onion flavour that reminds him of sitting out front of The Woodsman boozer on a Sunday while his father drunk beer and touched the arses of girls who didn’t want it but didn’t know how to stop it or even that they should since their fathers slapped mothers and filled the childhood air with the unemployed gas of nicotine and alcohol and fear and daughter’s cunt.

Junk mail through the letterbox causes the dart to fall out of the door and the four of cups falls unnoticed to the floor.

“Skunnerkyllym, leftlykdysytskunnerkylllym”

And so but yet while since now it had been just a spectacle of disgusting human compost putrefaction show as it wouldn’t and shouldn’t be but was written on the door etched ‘A.I.D.S SHOP’ Seth to the object of abjection, the power of horror and of a lust for disgust hacks at the wound with first a ladle digging deep as new pus squirts and dark, darker still blood runs thick as Nick’s body spasms and kicks and is then held down by the few who bear the room, the life, the squalorous abode and existence they chose to hide within from themselves and did then find themselves lost Seth scrapes a cheesegrater back and forth back and forth as Nick’s scream scares the birds from the unwanted clock at Battle Bridge so stuff in his mouth the hideous bouquet did Jane and grated flesh falls onto the floor and the pus is no more and black is no more and blood clots and toilet paper unused by the constipated few is pushed into the hole and sellotaped into place oncetwicethrice. Nick is turning blue in Jane’s arms.

“Wewerraysedasoutsyders. As fylf to be usd abused, brokeandysposedof. Nwenwewer oldenuf tostopovers, wydydyto ourselfs. Wewerraysedastrash, anytas alwaysbeenour fate to die like this, our dirty old blood, bleeding into the bare floorboards of a house with no love, gathering around disease, fascinated by that which we are and that others made us.”

Chris Dangerfield

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