Third instalment of Palahniuk’s homework. This story focuses on developing a theme which carries through to the conclusion. These stories aim to accumulate the skills taught exponentially so it also uses the methods of asserting authority dicussed and practiced in Irritant and Battery.
Enjoy.
Destitute
Disgruntled landlords usually discover them. Pissed off about a mountain of missed rent. They let themselves in. They enter angry. They leave traumatised. A human body can lie at room temperature for eight hours before you need to refrigerate it. Decomposition doesn’t wait around. If it was found recently deceased local police will rush it to the local mortuary. More often than not, the eight hour barrier has long passed.
Sometimes by days.
Sometimes by weeks.
Sometimes by months.
For some
Years.
After shipping the grisly package off to the mortuary some pen pusher is tasked with locating next of kin. There might not be next of kin. Here’s where it gets awkward. A logistical headache.
Destitute.
That’s what they call those who die with no money, no assets or a soul in the world who cares. The addicted or the mentally ill. The reclusive or the hated. An isolated ninety six year old who’d outlived everybody they knew. Sometimes they’re not even inside a home. Some homeless guy curled up at the foot of a tower block stairwell. Or frozen solid at a bus shelter. Back in the olden days they’d throw you in a big ditch. A Paupers’ Pit they called it. You can’t take a single step in London without stamping above the resting place of a long forgotten soul. Plague victims and medieval peasants. Tudor outlaws and Georgian nomads. Victorian vagrants and Edwardian prostitutes. Buried in a trench. Cemented over. Metropolis stands atop a countless pile of anonymous bones.
To bury Eleanor Rigby – alone with her name – it would cost £1000. At least. That’s why they cremate. It’s Economical. Thawed from the refrigeration unit. Wrapped in a plastic shroud. Boxed up in the same flimsy cardboard Ikea use for flat packed wardrobes. An expressionless mortuary employee will slide the corpse into a man-sized kiln. Like a stone baked pizza. At 2000 degrees Fahrenheit it’s hell on earth. At this unforgiving heat kidneys, liver, intestines and guts vaporize. Pumped out the chimney in a cloud of thick dark smoke. Bones have a tighter structure of densely packed molecules. They’re stubborn. The employee will scrape out the charred skeletal remains from the base of the oven. As multiple cremations take place throughout the day scraps of bone from different people often get mixed together. They cram whatever they’ve recovered into a human blender called a Cremulator. It sounds like a supercharged smoothie maker. It will obliterate the now weakened bones into tiny particles of dust. Even the most bloated morbidly obese bodies can be blitzed down to under 3kgs of ash. The whole process, including preparation and cooking time, takes around 90 minutes. Bodies are ready quicker than a Sunday roast.
The ashes are kept in a small oblong wooden box. Placed on a metal shelf next to thousands of other little boxes. By this stage a person is a number. Catalogued. Lost luggage at the train station. Unclaimed baggage at the airport. No longer a name. No longer an identity. The little boxes sit here undisturbed. Waiting for a reunion that never happens. Crematoriums have limited storage space. Eventually they get full up and have to make space for new arrivals. The cycle of neglect repeats Ad Infintum. They take all the forgotten little boxes and hand them to the local cemetery. The cemetery will have set apart a designated area for the digging of a mass grave. Head to toe in a white biohazard suit, complete with a protective face mask, an emotionless worker will pour an entire backlog of unmissed lives into this communal opening unceremoniously. Think of somebody emptying a full Dyson into the bin. Human dust engulfs the man as he tips more and more remains into the hole. The only people during these mass disposals are paid to be there. The guy pouring the ashes. The guy sitting in the little yellow JCB digger waiting to fill in the hole which will be left unmarked.The council official jotting down in his notepad. Even Eleanor Rigby got a priest. The mound of dry earth dumped on top will eventually sink. The ground will even itself out. The grass will grow back. In a couple of centuries the whole area will be tarmaced under an apartment complex. They may come from different places.
But all the lonely people
they end up here.
* * *
Mum went away. Somewhere nicer. A villa in Marbella I think. Some new bloke I think. She doesn’t know when she’s coming back.
Maybe months.
Maybe years.
Maybe never.
I’m looking after her place. Mum’s place isn’t too bad. Fourth floor. One bedroom. One bathroom. One Living room. Pokey kitchen. If you came over you’d think I was squatting. Mum sold most of the furniture before she left. There’s a beaten burgundy three seat sofa in the living room with a small round mahogany coffee table next to it. It’s filled messily with piles four or five paperbacks high. The lack of furnishing makes the room look like an empty showroom. There’s no television. The main light doesn’t have a lampshade. I have to read by the warm glow of a candlelight from a stick jammed into the neck of an old bottle of merlot. The room’s so empty it echoes. Not that there’s anyone around to talk too. The ceilings’ got that swirly textured finish that makes you dizzy if you stare at it for too long. The bedroom’s bare minus the queen sized bed pushed against the far wall next to the window. It shares the same worn emerald carpet as the living room. The wardrobes are built in. Covered with mirrored sliding doors as big as the entire wall space. At night I can see the outline of the duvet bagged mound of flesh that is my body. In the morning light I see my tired face. Staring back horizontally. There’s always a brief shot of startled excitement when I wake. I’m briefly tricked into thinking there’s somebody else here. Then I remember. It’s just me.
Whoever Virginmedia7808 is hasn’t heard of a Wifi password. I’ve been streaming so much porn from this domain that whoever pays the bill is coming to hell with me. When I’m not surveying the endless abyss of online filth I’m browsing through Facebook profiles. Old friends. The cyber show of what they want their life to be. Sometimes we exchange messages. They’ll come visit me they say. Something always comes up though. They’re barely people to me anymore. Just display pictures and status updates. Snippets of the surface of their lives. The wide smile they want the public to see. I get the odd message from mum. After she’s done posting a new photo album. Constant exposure to the sun has made her hair light. Her skin dark tanned. All the happiness she posts online is probably costing her a melanoma in return. I hardly recognise her.
“How’s the flat?”
“Are you keeping the place clean?”
“Did you sort out the council tax?”
All the important stuff. We never ask how the other one is. I’m not sure we even care. We exchange a few sentences. Then an automated message lets me know that she’s no longer available. Late at night when everyone’s offline. I lay on the sofa. Flame flickering frantically. Fighting for its last bit of life. Skimming through the tea stained pages of an old paperback. Halfway through a paragraph the it snuffs out with a hiss. It would be deadly silent if it wasn’t for the voices of the T.V next door. There’s probably over a hundred people in this building but the only people I hear are miles away in a studio somwhere. Every night I slip off to sleep with the wall talking to me.
I don’t need an alarm clock. At 6am the muffled chuckling of a breakfast show host lets me know it’s a new day. Diane next door. She’s like a character from one of the sitcoms she watches. Old. Cantankerous. Bitter. She’s lived here since forever. I think they installed her with the plumbing. She leaves bossy post it notes on the main entrance door.
Flat 3. Shut the side gate open when you leave the premises.
Flat 13. I’ve noticed dog hairs on your porch mat. Animals are not permitted in this building. Get rid of it or I’ll report you.
Flat 5. Tell your guests to keep quiet when leaving. Some of us like to sleep.
These notes are for people she’s never spoken to. It’s the closest thing she has to direct contact. She’s the kind of neighbour who’ll peer through the spy hole when she hears my door open. I see her shrunken pupil. A little black dot staring back at me from the middle of her front door. She must have realised that I notice because I haven’t seen that beady little eye following me out the door for a while now. If you knock on her door she pretends she’s not in. Her TV organises my life. If I want to tell the time I just listen to the wall. After the wake up call there’s the mid morning shows. A panel of Z-list celebrities discussing current affairs. It’s 9am. If I’m still in bed when I hear Cash in the Attic I know I’ve had a lay in. It’s 11am. A stern news anchor recalling suicide bombings in the middle east and school shootings in America. It’s Lunchtime. Excited sirens and ecstatic screams of game show contestants. It’s 3pm. A quick recap of the atrocities from earlier. It’s 6pm. I could tell you when the sun was setting without ever looking out of the window. Melodramatic soap opera crying. 7pm. Dinnertime . Canned sitcom laugher. It’s 9pm. Murder, rape and a local kitten saved from a tree. 10 o’clock news. Gunshots and explosions. Late night action movie. creeping up to midnight. Then it’s late night teleshopping. This cycle repeats Ad Infinitum. I listen in on the only people who ever talk to Diane.
Virginmedia7808 finally got a password. They must have wondered why the excess usage itinerary listed live cam shows they never got to see. My world shrinks. Diane’s muffled TV is my only reminder that other humans exist. It was about quarter past soap opera when I decided that I needed to get out. Listen to some real people. Not a hollow wall that mumbles at me all day. Down the road there’s a pub. One of the main windows is filled with chipboard. The other one that has frosted glass so you can’t see what is inside. Or who. The Steelers Arms is the kind of place I’d usually walk straight past. Desolate tatty façade. Accurate indication of what’s inside. The smoking ban has been in force for almost a decade but the place is still filled with the strong stench of exhaled Benson & Hedges. Perch on a stools and it creaks loud enough to make you uneasy about letting it take your full weight. I Rest a foot on the golden rail around the foot of the bar. The only thing more tired than the décor are the punters. Worn. Jaded. Hunched over in their little worlds of Strongbow, Pork Scratchings and hopelessness. The barmaid’s thickly applied bronze tone foundation does a terrible job of covering the dark crescents under her eyes. She’s been up the past three nights slouched over a laptop trying to finish a Uni assignment. The last thing she needs is this Wednesday night late shift. Nobody else was available. Plus those accommodation fees don’t pay themselves. Resting my forearm on a soggy bar towel I order a pint. I scout around this desolate dive. Flicking though conversations the way you flick through TV channels. In the far corner four students huddle over a table filled with empty bottles of fruit cider. They’re complaining to each other about deadlines. The only reason they’re in this dump is because the it’s cheap and the barmaid purposely undercharges them.
Change Channel.
To my left. An overweight guy. Silvering hair. An Overhanging gut stretches the logo of an Addidas t-shirt tucked into his supermarket bought jeans. His breathing laboured. He erupts into heavy coughing fits every couple of minutes. His lungs are probably blacker than the pint of Guinness he’s suckling on. He’s complaining about the price of council tax to the barmaid. She nods and agrees too long after he finishes his sentences to actually be listening.
Change channel.
To my right. At a table. A couple. Middle aged. Married. Running out of topics. They haven’t spoken a word since I got here. They sip their drinks alternately. Pint of lager for him. Gin and Tonic for her. Eventually she starts talking about what time the men are coming to fit the new carpet on Friday. He nods. No words.
Change channel.
Far end of the bar. My view slightly obstructed by a pillar. A bald patch expanding from his crown. Slouched at the bar. Resting his weight on both elbows. His face squashed into his fists. Green parker jacket zipped up to the top. By his feet is a bin black bag. The corner of a stained duvet peaks out. It’s hard to distinguish they’re piss, vomit or shit stains. Maybe a mixture of the three. He’s so hammered the pub probably looks like a Picasso painting to him. He’s three quarters of the way down a pint of Fosters. Not all of it made it to his throat. His coat is covered in dark blobs of spillage. He’s mumbling. Nobody is listening. I was about to change channel. He’s just a stumbling drunk I though. But then he animated. A disjointed stumble towards the couple. The woman still banging on monotonously about carpets. His delivery slurred. Directed at the husband. He was looking concerned by the disorganised approach.
“What’s your fucking problem?
You’re a bit of a wanker aren’t you?
That’s what I’ve heard.
A Wanker”
The husband is stunned. He Responds meekly.
“I don’t even know you mate”
With specs of spit spraying from his foaming mouth the drunks’ tone raises with volume and annoyance.
“Well then why have I heard that you’re a wanker?
You wanker”
The barmaid notices my confused concern. She tells me not to worry. He’s a local. He pulls this bullshit every night. He comes in at lunchtime. Sinks pints frantically into the evening. His wife divorced him years ago. His kids are all grown up. They don’t contact him. He just comes to this run down pub every day. Tells her the story about how he fucked up his life. Then he tries to get a reaction from somebody.
“Sad really” she ruminates.
She told me about a time recently. Nobody else was in. Just her and the angry pisshead. He started shouting at her. Calling her all sorts of horrible things. Threatening to climb over the bar and really “do her in”. Whatever that meant.
“I’ve never been so scared in my whole life”
A tear brewing as she recalls it.
“they shouldn’t leave me like that”
Her voice trembling.
“It’s not right being alone. I’m vulnerable”
Eventually the drunk gave up heckling. Passed out next to the fruit machine by the toilets. The only catastrophe a case heavily of soiled trousers.
“Now I’ve got to deal with this on my own” the barmaid sighed.
I offered to take her out after her shift had finished. She said she couldn’t. She had to deal with the mess he’d left. I offered to help. She said it was sweet but declined. There’s always some shit getting in the way.
I got home at half past action movie. I thought about the pisshead. If the sheet in the bin bag wasn’t covered in all three before it certainly was now. I wondered what would happen if one night he left the pub. Never came back. If anyone would look for him? What about if I went missing? Who would notice? I could drop dead right here in this flat and I’d have been devoured by maggots before anybody found me. The price you pay for solitude. Diane’s TV rabbits on through the wall. It never stops. She probably doses off listening to some failed drama school graduate selling power tools at 2am. At first the constant hum of background conversation was comforting. Even preferable to silence. But when I really think about it. I get mad. Diane just sitting there. On her own. Thinking that the people on the tv are talking to her. They’re not really talking to her. They’re talking at her. Past her. Directionless noise. Pixels on a screen. Like the Facebook friends. Like mum. It’s like being in that in that filthy old pub. With the neglected alcoholic and the vulnerable barmaid. A room full of words. Nothing worth listening to. Like walking down the street in the city during the day. Continuous speech. Not a single utterance directed at you. Except the baristers asking you what size cup you want. The guy at the sandwich place asking what filling you want. They don’t care about you. It’s just part their job to pretend they do.
There’s millions of people in this city. Sitting in front of flat screens every night. Listening to a fake person talking to another fake person while other fake people listen. People spend hours sitting watching this crap. Like Diane sitting next door. In reality she’s alone. In her head the room is full. If only she realised the truth. If she realised it was all delusion. She’d realise that she’s alone. Like everyone in front of those screens. Listening to peopled paid to speak at a camera. Empathising with actors pretending to be somebody. Pretending to be real people. Listen to somebody talk about characters from a soap opera. They talk as if they actually know them. The TV replaces the silence alright. Replaces it with bullshit. With meaningless drivel. All day. All night. Filling rooms with noise. Talking to nobody in particular. But everybody thinks it’s talking to them. The hollow wall that talks all day. It’s driving me crazy. Constant sound. I’ve had enough. The silence is better than this. I’d rather have the silence. At least the silence is real. Genuine. If you unplugged every TV in building this there would be silence. If everyone’s wifi lost connection and they couldn’t download endless series from Netflix there’d be no more bullshit echoing through every wall. No sound. No light. Like me.
After running out of books all I can do is listen to Diane’s tv. Her existence of denial. I need it to stop. If she refuses to open the door I’m just going to burst in. Throw that fucking television out of the window. I don’t care if she leaves me a really nasty note. I’ll be during her a favour. I’m a social worker. She’ll be forced to invite neighbours round for afternoon tea. She’ll get in contact with old acquaintances. Set up a book club to keep her company because there’s no more game shows to watch. Maybe she’ll even invite me to the book club. I’ve certainly read enough. We’ll spend entire evenings in her living room discussing Dickens and Jane Austen. We’ll all laugh about the night I banged on her door night and smashed that sodding screen with a hammer. She’ll thank me. I’ll stop the bullshit. I storm out of my front door with a determined march. I don’t care that it’s Teleshopping O’clock in the morning. I thumb down hard on Diane’s door bell. She doesn’t answer. She probably falls asleep in front of the box while I have to stay up all night listening to it babble on with nonsense. I clench a fist. Bang against the door so hard the safety chain rattles inside.
Nothing.
Maybe she’s out.
Maybe she does have some family after all.
Maybe they carted her off to some nursing home.
Maybe nobody turned the TV as they dragged her out.
I don’t care where she is. I’d rather live in silence than with the constant flow of scripted conversations drilling into my brain. I’m stopping the noise. The rehearsed bullshit. The illusion of correspondence.
“DIANE IF YOU DON’T OPEN TIHS DOOR NOW I’M PUTTING MY FUCKING FOOT THROUGH IT
IT’S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
I’M SAVING YOU”
It’s not as easy to kick down a door as they make it out on TV. Bullshit and lies. Obviously. I heaved the sole of my worn out trainer against the door with so much enough force it felt like the bones in my knee joint smashed together. I keep telling myself
I’m doing her a favour.
She’ll thank me.
It took enough heavy blows to wake up half the building . Eventually I got in. The corridor stunk of mould. Earthy. Like it a field that had been rained on. There were some insects scattering around. The sound became louder as I progressed towards the closed door at the end of the hallway.
I’m doing her a favour.
She’ll thank me.
I felt like a superhero as I twisted the dust covered door handle and barged into the rom like Dirty Harry.
I’m doing her a favour.
She’ll thank me.
* * *
Things go downhill pretty quickly after that eight hour barrier has been breached. The heart has stopped pumping blood. There’s no pressure to fight against the pull of gravity. Dark deoxygenised blood pools in the lower parts of the body. As cells die bacteria spreads. Things get gruesome rapidly. Fluid from the lungs oozes from every orifice. The smell is putrid. Like a punch that goes straight through your face. Into the back of your skull. The same way sniffing a bottle of ammonia feels like a physical attack. That’s why I threw up immediately. That and the almost deafening buzz of thousands of flies. Spawned from the maggots that had feasted off the festering flesh. It was like the final scene from Alred Hitchcok’s The Birds except with bugs. Attacking my face. Eating my puke. Diane’s face was as white as porcelain. Her legs visible from below the hem of the knee length skirt she was wearing looked like they’d been dipped into purple ink. People who die in closed rooms create their own little ecosystem of terror. The fact the central heating was left on high only exacerbated things. The coroner said that due to her bloated corpse. The advanced stage of putrefaction. Diane had probably been sitting there for about three weeks. Repeats of Eastenders playing out in front of her lifeless eyes. Sunken into their decomposing sockets. All those hours I thought she was sitting there watching Schzenegger blowing up bad guys. It was just an empty shell. Listening to the noise. Slowly eroding away. The whole time the only person listening to the fake conversations. The bullshit noise. Was me.
Not all destitute funerals are because no next of kin could be found. Sometimes the closest relatives just aren’t that close. Legally they’re only obliged to provide information about the deceased. It’s not their responsibility to provide a funeral. People can’t fork out a large sum of money to dispose of somebody they stopped sending Christmas cards to a decade ago. Either that or they just don’t care enough to want to. That was the case with Diane. They found some long lost cousin. Five hundred miles away. They were shocked. Not that that she was dead. That she’d still been alive. They didn’t care about what happened to her body. Why would they spend all that money on a grave they’ll never visit? Diane had absolutely nothing of value. Even the poxy TV was worthless after being left on continuously for so long. I never fully explained what happened to mum. It’s hard to describe the trauma via instant messenger. When I try to call her. She never picks up. She said not to ring unless I’m dying. It costs too much to receive calls from abroad. She’s trying to save money at the moment. Just after I found what was left of Diane the boiler conked out. For good. Mum had to send me the money for the replacement. Not only did Diane avoid the numbered box on the mortuary shelf. The dumping into the crowded pit. She managed to go one better than Eleanor Rigby. Not only did she get a vicar. She got me too. Yeah. New Boilers cost a fortune these days. The same amount as a funeral in fact.
Eventually somebody new moved in next door. After they cleaned the flat with industrial strength chemicals to get rid of the smell. A lady. Not as old as Diane. But nearly. I introduced myself. She explained that she’d moved here from a big house. It was too big for her. To be there all alone. Her husband had died from a heart attack last year. The’d never had any kids. She was annoyed because her TV had broken in transit. She was having trouble setting up the wifi too.
“Well…” I said
“I don’t have a tv but why don’t you come over for a chat. Rather than sitting in there on your own?”
“That’d be lovely” She smiled
“I don’t watch much tele anyway”
Esteban.
Esteban 