Calamity of So Long Life
TITLE: Calamity of So Long Life
CHARCTERS: Mitchell, Josie and others
RATING: PG
GENRE: Musing and a bit of angst
WORDS: 3, 466
SUMMARY: Mitchell indulges in a bit of existential angst. Set between series 1 & 2 with potentially some spoilers I guess
DISCLAIMER: Nothing is mine, as usual. I apologise to Toby Whithouse and the BBC for borrowing Mitchell for a wee while but I promise to give him back unstaked! Not betaed so apologies for any minor gaff. I welcome any comments, including corrections.
George was wrong. Some days, like today, Mitchell could forget. Today was a good day. Today he was just an ordinary bloke enjoying a drink in a bar. He was sitting in front of the Arnolfini nursing a bottle of Peroni and watching the world go by, the late afternoon sun glinting off the brush steel of the table top and catching like a small jewel in the green glass of his beer bottle. He’d been there for a good few hours, flicking aimless through a copy of The Wasp Factory and avoiding the disapproving looks of the waiter who kept asking in a pointed manner if ‘Sir would like another beer?’. No, Sir bloody would not, this one had already cost him more than a fecking week’s wages as it was! But Mitchell just smiled benignly and shook his head, dropping his gaze back to his book and hoping the guy wouldn’t notice that he’d been on the same page for at least the last half hour. Once the callow youth had buggered off Mitchell gave up the pretence altogether and just leant back in his chair, adjusting his shades and resting a booted foot across his knee.
He remembered this place when it had all been very different. Back then the stench of the quayside would turn your stomach, especially on a hot day like this when a putrid smog would hang thick over the brackish water. Some days it had been so bad it would make you choke; a bitter taste burning in the back of your throat. There was a very different clientele hanging around back then too. Particularly, after the docks closed down and the warehouses were boarded up and abandoned. Old drunks would vie for space in piss-soaked doorways with teenage glue sniffers - their mouths encrusted with running sores - or vacant eyed smack addicts doubled over in the throws of withdrawal. Sometimes, scallies from the local council estates would come down looking for lead and copper to rip out of the burnt-out buildings. And on a Friday and Saturday night the less salubrious of Bristol’s working girls would attempt to pick up trade from the local clubs, hoping for a punter too fecking pissed to even find their pricks let alone worry about where they might be putting it. In short, it was a place where people often disappeared but were seldom ever missed.
God, it couldn’t be more different from today. Today, sprawling out in front of him was the cream of the affluent society, all enjoying a dose of late August rays. A basking mass of middle class flesh reared on Trust Funds, 5-a-day goodness and private health schemes. Mitchell soaked it all in. He loved the whole summer vibe thing going on. The sun sparkled off ripples across the water and flashed off the blades of a boat crew as they drove forward in unison. The warm golden-yellow sandstone of the quayside was strewn with small groups of people making the most of what might be the last of the summer’s good weather. Clusters of students were sprawled out, lying on top of cast off hoodies and jackets. Some were pouring diligently over A4 folders while others just lay there soaking up the heat. The white collar brigade was also beginning to filter out from their stifling airless offices. Pints of larger and white wine spritzers were set precariously on the cobbles; shirt sleeves were rolled up and sweat pricked around collars and trickled down between shoulder blades. Christ, even the sullen little emos with their too tight skinny jeans and cheap eyeliner were making the most of it; skulking around by the harbour wall with a 2 litre bottle of cheap cider from Lidol.
Mitchell could smell and taste the humanity of it all. It wasn’t overwhelming. He knew he was safe. It just played around the edges of his consciousness. Nudging his senses and tickling across his tongue. He let it all in. He had been clean over six months now and some days he hardly thought about it at all. He knew himself and his addiction; knew ways of coping with the danger. And while he might never be free of it, he was at least in control. He remained wary - always careful - but this was ok, this was just joining others in a bit of harmless people watching: an innocent pastime not a prelude to a kill.
The sun warmed him. Not in the same way as it had when he was mortal, but he couldn’t remember how that had felt anymore, and this was kind of tingly and nice. He had even rolled up his shirt sleeves; although rather incongruously he had left his gloves on. He reached across the little table for his packet of Golden Virginia and with one hand rolled another cigarette. He smiled at himself, he hadn’t lost the touch. His brother had first taught him how to do that when they used to nick tabs off his da.
The tobacco was his attempt at economising. He was trying desperately to save money on fags since he seemed to be smoking more than a bleeding navvy at the moment. He hated to think of the state of his lungs, they must be as black as the coalhole by now. Annie was always nagging at him to give up, but Christ what was it going to do? Kill him? He felt a bit bad about George though, secondary smoking and all that, but he seemed pretty cool about it most of the time, well apart from the odd hissy fit.
As Mitchell flicked his Zippo open and lit his cigarette he saw three girls move onto the table opposite. He watched them as they settled themselves, shedding jackets and cardigans and looking around for menus. One of them caught his eye and held it for a moment before immediately huddled together with her mates and whispering. Giggling, they took it in turns to glance at him surreptitiously while peering over a menu or reached down to adjust a shoe. Oh about as subtle as a fecking bulldozer girls! He smiled to himself and pushed his shades up into his hair so he could meet the eyes of one of the girls who had, apparently, taking an intense interest in the sign behind him advertising the joys of a toasted Panini. Mitchell reckoned she was about 22 - maybe 25 tops - and wore her brown hair in a feathered bob so it framed her pretty face. She blushed wildly when she saw him returning her gaze and just for a second the surge of blood pumping around her body overwhelmed him, making him feel slightly sick. He turned away and took a drag of his fag to calm himself, but when he looked up again she was talking with her mates, his presence for the time being seemingly forgotten.
He looked at himself in the window glass of the café and, not for the first time, was amazed to see the striking young man who stared back at him. He seldom saw himself in the flesh - he had no photographs and saw no face in the bathroom mirror when he shaved in the morning - but the figure he saw now reflected back at him in the plate glass was not the 116 year old man he knew himself to be. Not that he felt old. Does anyone ever really feel their age? No, but for most people it worked the other way around. For most people it was the shock of the lined face and saggy skin staring back from the mirror which betrayed the youth of their mind’s eye. But he always remained young: his skin never betrayed by gravity; his hair never thinning or turning grey; his eyes never sullied by too much booze and too many late nights. Yer, he could look like shite but it never lasted long. Soon his body always righted itself. Returned him back to that moment when he was turned.
He’d once read the novel Dorian Gray back in the 60s. There had been a huge fuss at the time about decriminalisation of homosexuality by the new Sexual Offences Act and Oscar Wilde was been lorded as a victimized hero on one hand, or a debauched pariah on the other, depending on your point of view. Mitchell really didn’t give a damn, but the notion of the book intrigued him and he pinched a copy from the local library. Needless to say it had a profound effect on him.
Josie would hold him when he woke screaming in night. It was always the same nightmare: a shattered image betraying his crimes held in a dark attic. She would hold him and rock him, gently stroking his hair and muttering that he shouldn’t be so daft. But no amount of her soothing could subdue the violent shivers which would wrack through his body, leaving him in a pool of sweat, yet unable to shake the foetid image of his soul captured lurid on a diseased canvas. Whenever he closed his eyes it would stare back at him - evil, embittered, glutted and corrupt.
Next morning, in the sanity of daylight, she continued to try and reassure him. Saying how different he was now from when she’d first met him. How it had all largely been Herrick fault. How he was a victim and how, perhaps, really Mitchell had a conscience stronger than anyone else because of what it cost him to stay clean. She tried to convince him how he shouldn’t let some stupid book, written by an old geezer with a persecution complex, get to him so much. He never knew if she recognised the irony of that statement but he thought she probably did - not much slipped past Josie. Later that afternoon he had found the dog-eared paperback in the bin where she had thrown it, carefully buried beneath a pile of old tea grouts, an empty tin of Carnation milk and the remains of the previous night’s chips.
Poor Josie; she’d deserved so much better. He had sometimes wondered whether it wouldn’t have been kinder to kill her that first day. At least that would have been quick and clean. Well, perhaps not clean. But then who was he kidding, kinder for who? She had shown him a different way of life; shown him that his fate wasn’t ‘fixed’ and that he didn’t have to be defined by his condition. What’s more, she had stood by him through all of the torment of withdrawal. Jesus, she must have been terrified. Even now he had a clear memory of every aching day of it.
With his consent, she had tied him to the bed and attempted to make him as comfortable as possible but once the terrors had set in he had tried everything to get her to release him. He’d pleaded, begged and cried, but mostly he’d threatened. It even scared him the things that he had promised to do to her. He had no idea his mind could harbour such diseased images but the cravings drew them out of him. How did she stand it? How could she look at him knowing he could imagine all that? And neither of them could be in any doubt that had she untied him, or had he had managed to slip free, he would have ripped her throat out without hesitation.
She had witnessed all that. Suffered his screams, threats and obscenities and still, when it was over, she never failed to love him. He was never sure how he felt about that. He did love her too, he didn’t doubt it, but she needed him too much. You see, after the turmoil and the pain of withdrawal then what was left for him? What could he cling to to see him through eternity?
He remembered once telling her about the guilt that clawed at him when he was clean. They had been sitting at the Formica table in the kitchen of the flat they now shared, a mug of tea cradled between his hands and a half finished packet of penguin biscuits lying crumpled on the plastic tablecloth. Overcome with remorse, he had tried to ameliorate some of his anguish by sharing it with her. He’d off loaded it all and she listened without recriminations, climbing up onto his lap and to hold him as he sobbed.
But the truth was that it was never really the guilt which got to him in the end. No, it was the yawning chasm of the mundane. Without that fear of death to sharpen the senses and heighten the moment, nothing had any purpose anymore. All human life was shaped by hopes and ambition. It didn’t matter how large or small those dreams were, from the bleeding Pope to a car park attendant, all were driven to ‘live’ their lives in that three score years and ten, or whatever the feck it was. But that no longer applied to him, and when you have eternity to contemplate what do with your life then nothing really seems to immediately spring to mind.
He didn’t know how Annie coped with all those hours stretching out before her. But then he knew that ultimately in the end she wouldn’t. He’d known a great many ghost over the years, some of them much more powerful and vengeful than Annie, but in the end they’d all faded away. You see after a while every cheating lover, every conniving friend, every ungrateful child and every murdering bastard would all die, taking with them all hope of vengeance. Once that happens then even the most all consuming rage dissipates until there’s nothing left. At that point the majority ghosts pass over, but still a few remain, suspended like echoes in the shadows. The thought saddened him. He didn’t want that to happen to Annie, but he understood.
In the first few years after he had been turned, he’d distracted himself by trying to ‘achieve’ things. He had learnt to read properly; learnt to play the piano; learnt French - though feck knows why - learnt to dance the Charleston effortlessly and even to fly a biplane, though the bleeding thing damn near terrified him to death. But after the first twenty or thirty years or so, all such things seemed pretty pointless. So then he had focused all his enthusiasm on killing and soon discovered he had quite a talent for it. It served a dual purpose: the hunt itself heightened the intensity of the moment and the post-kill remorse filled the empty spaces in between. But then Josie came along. When he met her he went properly clean for the first time and after a while - a long while mind - the cravings stopped, and eventually so did the guilt. It would cling around at the edge of his consciousness now and again but days would often pass without a face or memory to disturb his peace of mind.
He finally had a ‘normal’ life and for ten years it was a pretty good and fulfilling one. A life of Saturday night clubbing and Sunday morning lie-ins; a life of holidays to the coast and trips to Paris; a life of fantastic, mesmeric sex, counterpoise by comfortable afternoons on the sofa; a life of good friends, pretty decent wine and quiet companionship; a life of belonging and being loved but ultimately it was never going to be enough. You see ‘being human’ was always having to face mediocrity. Being human was safe and comfortable and unassuming. Being human stretched on for an eternity of grey, never punctuated by the vivid dazzle of the kill. He may have kidded himself for a while but in his heart Mitchell had known that killing had never really been about the hunger or the need to feed. It wasn’t even about the blood. It had always been about the rush of it all. It was the excitement of living on the periphery, of having no certainty except that there were no bounds.
Of course he seldom allowed himself to admit this. He needed to rationalise his actions in order to live with himself. Now that was ironic. Mitchell needed to be human even though the reality of that frightened the shit out of him and always had, even back when he was mortal. Josie had anchored him, she had made him human. And as such he repaid her loyalty by doing the most human thing in the world - he left her. Of course he had glamorised it by blaming the blood lust and falling off the wagon in a big way, his shame giving him the excuse of never having to go back and face her. But the reality was that he had just grown bored of it all. Her body no longer excited him the way it used to and, with the battle to control his condition lying dormant, nothing energised him in the same way. It just wasn’t enough to live for anymore. He needed to re-establish chaos.
Of course he regretted it now. When he had first seen her again back at the hospital, he had realised just how much he regretted it. Christ, he was a shit. He had been a shallow fecker back then; his vanity and frailty all too human. In the years that passed he had come to value just what he’d lost. How there had not exactly been queues of people lining up to love someone who might at any moment, quite literally, rip yer fecking heart out. He had been glad that in the end he had had the chance to say he was sorry. Losing her again was one of the most painful experiences of his life but after the shock of it all subsided, he found comfort in the fact that now she would always be with him. He had taken her into himself and felt her there, giving him strength when he wanted to give way to it all. He wasn’t sure how long he would last this time. How long he would be able to keep the all consuming futility of it all of at bay, but he was going to keep trying for George and Annie and Nina sake if for nothing else. He wouldn’t let them down in the same way he had her. They helped him see a way forward. They helped him see the simple pleasures of a sunny afternoon.
At that moment he heard the double bleep of his phone and the screen light up with a text. It was from George - ‘Mitchell, where the fuck are you?’ Shit! It was Tuesday and George was cooking shepherd’s pie. He always made shepherd’s pie on Tuesday and then they’d watch the ‘Real Hustle’ with Annie griping all the way through it that surely people couldn’t be THAT gullible. And now he was late, and fricking George would be having a complete melt down back at the flat. Not to mention that Mitchell had also promised to pop into Tescos on the way home and pick up some beers and more tea bags. Bugger!
He stood up and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair, stuffing the book and his tobacco in the inside pocket as he slung it on. At the same time the group of girls sitting opposite also got up to leave, the dark haired one again catching his eye. She continued to hold his gaze, flicking her eyes momentarily down to the table to collect her bag, before lifting them towards him again. She smiled, sucking down a little on her bottom lip, making it plump and enticing. She kept watching him over her shoulder as she turned to go; inviting him on. He let himself listen to her heart pumping, just for a second. Felt the steady throb of blood surging around her body; tasted the adrenalin and the pheromones; the sweat trickling down between her breasts and pooling just above her navel. He let it all in; flirting with the blood lust, letting it lick around him and hum through his senses before forcing himself to turn away. He had it under control. He had this beaten. He would go home to George and Annie and the saggy old sofa and crappy TV. That was all he wanted. This time it would be enough. But somewhere is the back of his mind he felt the dark creature in the attic stirring.