Badwell Drive by Joe Ogden
City Dawn Part 1
Dawn. The sun, a deep red through mist, rising over the gas storage towers. He sits out on the balcony of his eighth floor flat. Black coffee again; the milk was off and he could never remember to buy coffee whitener. Pulls out a yellow box and slides out the blister pack, Prozac Fluoxetine 20mg, an index finger presses against the bubble marked Friday, and like a miniature intercontinental missile breaking out of its silo bay, the green and cream capsules shoots through the silver membrane, with the ‘crinkle’ of foil. Without stopping it carries straight on, hitting the rim of his gold plated glasses. What happened from this point may be one of those hallucinations often associated with Fluoxetine, at the dull ‘pid’ of E131 hitting gilt, relative time slowed, the green and cream projectile arced its way over the balcony rail and out into open space. Falling the five of the eight floors to be plucked out of the air by a passing raven. Not normally noted for it’s mid air interception skills the raven, surprised and shocked, swallows this tip-bit from the gods without question, It’s potent chemical affecting the ravens relevant ‘T’cell gene sequence, its ascendants would over the next four million years revert back to their dinosaur ancestor, pterodactyls. He slipped out of the dream just in time to see this leather winged creature fly toward the now fully risen sun.
Mark walked back into the flat to return a few minuets later with his S.L.R. camera: removes the lens cap off the telephoto, puts it to his eye and points it towards the near distant hills. A woman walks her dog through the park. The swing seats had been set on fire some time ago and nobody was going to renew them, not in this generation of youth.
‘The young don’t care, they’ll only torch them again.’
The dog sniffed at the fossilised trees, stone like stumps in the ground. A million and seven years ago they would have been part of a large everglade, swamps and mango groves. He knew the exact date as he had lived at the flat seven years. The dog cocked up its leg and peed on them. As an ironic comment on Mark's life, really.
She, the dog owner, looks straight into the lens as if she could tell that half a mile away some one was watching her. ‘Click,’ the camera scanned the horizon once more. Making its way up the hill on the far side of the park, he focused on a milk float. It stops and out jumps the milkman, his tongue pressed against his top lip. His cheeks bellowing in and out, Dizzy Gillespie style. Whistling, he had to be whistling. Yes. ‘Click.’
Finding Dawn’s window wasn’t easy, she’ll still be in bed. The window, part open, the coloured dyed parachute silks bellowing back. There she was lying on her bed. It was warming up now and the mist was clearing. The covers were pushed back. Pregnancy makes a woman look so beautiful; her baby was due any day.
He put down his camera and walked back into the living room. A strange thought entered his head when he caught a glimpse of himself in the long mirror. In is mind’s eye he could see an old man in a brown suit with his shirt tucked down underpants; the rim of this undergarment clearly visible above his Chums trousers waist line, giving a talk on ‘Symbolic interaction and the common deviant.’ A strange thing for a pair of trouser to talk about, but who knows what the technocrats had up their sleeves for trouser artificial inter-leg-inteligence. Was that vision really going to be him in forty years time? Looked down to make sure his underwear wasn’t hanging over his belt. Then realised it could not be him, he wasn’t going to live another forty years.
Out of the kitchen back window, down in the square below, the local kids were gently stoning the parked Hurst, out of respect for Mainline Jack. After 50 years of drugs abuse, he was murdered by his step daughter. Buying Lily that baseball bat for Christmas wasn’t one of his brightest ideas. After beating him to death with it, she then found she had to go to the chippy for herself, after all. This annoyed her some what, but she was sad too; ‘Jack had been a good dad, and dealer.’ A day later when one of his punters called, they shared a splif, the punter took the rest of the stash and called in the cops.
Outside now Lily was handcuffed to the wing mirror of the Hurst. It slowly pulled away. Lily would have to walk through the city in shame, to the cremmy. Possibly the furthest she’d ever walked in her life. Mark stuck two fingers up as a salute. ‘If the bastards don’t get you, the baseball bat will.’ He pulled down the blind. Second coffee time.
