What a fuking palaver!

I had a weird dream this morning. I was going to see the prodigy with glimmer, han and genevieve, which I am actually doing in November. Instead of it being at Cardiff International Arena it was a festival kinda setup, out in the openair, all grass and concrete. I scored some Ecstasy off of Grenin, like 20 pills. They were wrapped in a huge rizla using a special technique, like Tricks used to do back at the flat. I had a go at Gren for the bum pills he’d sold us a couple of weeks ago and he apologised. Whatever. I started missioning towards the stage alone. I wandered down this path with walls of concrete. There was a security woman there and she wanted to search me. I refused. She looked at me with a smirk and said “I know what you’ve got in your pockets.” I just stared at her with fat dilated pupils. “I know you know what I have in my pockets,” I pleaded “but couldn’t you let me off? Please? It’s the Prodigy, after all.” I guess that didn’t fly because next thing I know I’m walking back to where glimmer, han and genevieve are. I see a wasted Jasper Carrot at the tailend of a fist fight being helped up by some guy who asked him if he was alright.

I awoke with this terrible sense of foreboding at 9am. Bad thoughts started running through my head like tape on a reel to reel player, looping back and forth. I thought about the job I’ve just gotten and mourned the loss, sinking down into panic. I wrapped the pillow around my head trying to block out the morning. All I wanted to do was return to that dreamstate and sleep strangely till noon. I staved off consciousness for about an hour before giving up. Walking around the front room and kitchen I felt the sinister residue of my dream slowly slip away, being replaced with unusual elation at a new day of things to do and missions to go on. My time was still mine to fill how I pleased until Monday. I ate a banana and thought about things to write. I read more of Sandman vol.1 over two bowl of cheerios. I decided to go spend my last fiver on an electricity token. I threw on my battered airwalks and strolled outside.

This is where things go to fuk. It’s strange that the first part of this day would be so shit after such an errie dream. Yesterday I was reading a book on Jung with an eye to reap his theories to apply to stories and characterisations. There’s quite a lot in there about dreams and the collective unconcious, occult and strange goings on. Jung came up with the theory of Synchronicity – the parallel interconnections of events in peoples lives. Definitely feels like something Ominous is afoot. Usually, I revel in such things, soak up very strange occurrence like a sheet of bounty, but after the following occrances I was having trouble dealing with the bizarre aura of the day.

There was no queue in the postoffice/spar thing.I slipped a £5 pound note and my electricity card under the window at the counter. “An electricity token please,” I asked the hindu lady behind the glass. Before she could catch herself she asked “How much?” and then laughed at herself. “Sorry.”
“One of those days, huh?” I replied, laughing myself.
“One of those weeks, months, years more like!”
I laughed some more.

Walking home I thought about how I was surrounded by Hindus and Muslims, plus a few Christians I’m sure, and how comfortable it made me feel to know that. The diversity made me smile. I’ve never been one of these delusional nationalistic fucks. I feel no overpowering love of my country. It could all go to hell as far as I was concerned. I’ve had the idea to elope in my head since I first went to the States. Not there though, too close to the Hellmouth for my liking, but perhaps further north. Canada seems like a pretty sweet country and the girls there sure do get under your skin. I can’t speak any languages but my native tongue so it would be useful to be somewhere where English was dominant – not that I’m adverse to learning another language, I’m just lazy. Languages take time and effort. Time and effort I’d rather apply to other things.

Back in the house I drop my keys on the coffee table and open up the cabinet with the electric box inside. I take my cardboard token out of my pocket, careful not to bend it, and slip it into the slot.
But nothing happens.
I push it in again slowly. Again, nothing. No registration of new credit, no error message, just the amount of money left (£3.77) done up in Liquid Crystal splendour.
I flip it round the other way so the arrows on the grey strip pointi towards me and slide it in again, careful, just like it says on the box, at a constant speed.
This time I get an error message.
Forking marvellous.
The vertigo of panic sets in. I’m on the verge of freaking out like a motherfucker but soon strangle the feeling down. Just keep your head, man, just keep your head. Don’t think too hard about how you spent your last £5 on this token, and how your know there’s nothing the lady back at the postoffice can do because those black lines scored into the card signify that it has been spent, even though it hasn’t. Just go back there and she can help you figure it out.

Back at the postoffice, this time in a queue. I fidget nervously and look around at cheap toys, noticing one of those yoyos with the ballbearings that were all the rage back in highschool. I never had one, not out of poverty, but because I didn’t see the point. I was a pretty isolated kid back then and I didn’t really do much to help matters, a combination of my childish braindamaged ignorance and sheer intellectual arrogance. I pull the trigger of a water pistol repeatedly. The woman in front of me turns to look and I smile into her fixed, slightly stern face.

At the counter I learn what I already knew. Self-pity prods about at synapses and I let it rise up in me. Maybe if I come across really pathetic she’ll cave in. Pity can be a useful tool if you use it right, but if she gave me another token she’d have to pay for it herself. She gives me the number to call. Dejected, I thank her and walk away. On my way to the door I curse the electricity company out. “Motherf*cking Swalec, bunch of c*nts, I’ll break off their legs and shove them up their ars3!” As I’m about to leave a notice the stunned expression on the shop clerks face and quickly explain that it wasn’t directed at anyone who worked in the shop before slipping out. I imagine he’ll mention it to the postoffice woman. I think I’ll have to apologise and explain myself further the next time I get a token. She seems a nice lady.

*

Back on my street, searching my pockets for my keys.
Frowning, searching again.
That familiar feeling.

*

I stand on my doorstep cursing and freaking. What can I do? What can I do? I can’t call the landlord, his number is on a letter in my room. I can’t call anyone, in fact, because I’d just spent the last of my loose change on calling Swalec. I had £3 left, but that was inside. Maybe I’d left a window open around back! I’d done it before. I searched my memory but came up with a negative response. Not knowing what else to do I knocked next door anyway to see if they’d let me hop over their garden fence. The one who answered wasn’t the one who spoke English. I repeated key words, desperate for him to understand me, but felt like a prick for doing so. He went and got the one who could speak English and I thanked him like he’d just saved my life. I’m not angry with him for not speaking english, I mean, I’ve got no right, but you have to ask yourself why he’d answered the door in the first place. Guess he thought it was one of his other housemates.

In the garden I pushed a chair up against the corner where the backwall and the wooden fence met. I pushed myself up on the palms of my hand and swung over into a pile of brambles. Carefully picking my way through I went quickly to check the backdoor to find it locked. Up in his room the [country of origin] smiled and gave me the thumbs up. I automatically returned the gesture even though things were far from okay. I wracked my brain and cursed and cursed. Should I call my mum reverse charges? No, what could she do? All that would do would cause her worry and aggrevation. No, you’re a resourceful lad Adam, figure this out. All I could think of doing was smashing the window and climbing through. I chose one the toilet one as it was the smallest and most out of the way from the living area (although on hindsight also the most noticeable from the back of the houses the garden led onto – I just hope they’re not populated by thieving townie scum). At first I pondered using a brick but quickly rejected that as just plain stupid. Then I remembered this meatspace hack I’d read online years ago, about a guy who locked himself out of his house, who’d applied tape to the window before using a long, cylindrical thing to tap a neat hole through the pane. Shame I didn’t have any tape, but I did have a broom handle. I cracked a hole through the bottom right hand corner, sending a bottle of toilet cleaner flying into the bowl, and reached through and lifted the latch. There goes my security deposit.

I struggled to climb through but eventually made it inside. I racked my brains for someway to cover the hole and in the end settled on bluetac and a thick piece of cardboard. I thought about calling my landlord but remembered that he’d said he was going away for a while. Anyway, no reason to drop myself in it yet, maybe I can use some of my student loan to get the glass replaced before he comes next for the rent.

This story has a kind of happy ending. Not particularly uplifting but definitely a kind of relief. Back at the phonebox, when I was calling Swalec, I noticed that one of the kids had been skinning up a spliff and had left green residue all over the side. Enough for an extremely weak one-skin. I considered whether or not he’d be back for it, and if he would realise it had been that mosher that’s been seen around the past couple of weeks who’d taken it. I dismissed this out of hand. There was barely enough to fill a one skin, why would he be back? I scrapped it into my palm with my university identity card and crossed the road back to Halstead street.

See? Not paticularly happy but better than a blade in your belly.

I think I might turn all this into a short story, add even more strange and unfortunate occurences, give it a structure and put it into the third person. Actually, maybe a combination of third and first. Could be kinda cool.