He was headed back along the waterfront towards the nearest transport dock to hop on a barge back to the inner city. He was thinking about a beer or several. The city had transformed itself into a prison around him, invisible bars revealed. Only those at the top were granted access to the right to leave. The best anybody else could do was sail in circles. A passively hostile world had been revealed to be actively hostile. The stacks became cells and the waterways became halls between cages. Nobody escaped.
Ahead of him, a ball of agitated noise and shuffling. Drawing closer, he could see two snarling men at the centre of a circle. Their twitchy gestures and barks of aggression punching through the background chatter static vibrating between curious fear and thirsting excitement. A sour tang of old sweat on the air. A dozen phones held out by watching men and women, yammering into them like the world’s worst journalists.
He was seized suddenly by a strange thing. An urge unrecognised. An ideal from beyond the gutter. If he couldn’t escape, if he couldn’t sail off into the sunset, perhaps he could, at least, try to make some sad fragment of this decaying panopticon just a fraction better. Experience suggested a hundred illustrations of the inexplicable idealism and naivete inherent to this thought. But what, otherwise, was the point? Perhaps it was the two lines he’d done before leaving the pods, but he found himself smiling despite it all. Perhaps he was becoming as detached as the other residents of his block.
He manoeuvred through the crowd, drawing side eyes and glances, ignoring the twinge in his mind that pulsed a warning. He shoved it aside and pressed on, emerging into the small clearing in which two brawny men beat their chests and roared at one another in progressing volume. The familiar animalistic displays of men hyping themselves up to throw down. He stepped forward.
‘Hey, hey, come on, now. Ease it up – no need to make a scene,’ he announced, raising his hands like a pastor calming sheep. The shrill static in the crowd now punctured with curious yips and murmurs of confusion. The two men in the centre were brawny and greasy, wearing dirty faded wifebeaters, thick trousers, and heavy well-worn footwear. One had a crooked hooked face like a vulture, and the other resembled a half-starved bulldog. The air was thick with their sweat and odour, fizzing with pent up aggression.
They turned their heads together on thick necks, this expected merchant of peace and good will. ‘I’m sure we can talk it through, nobody needs to get hurt.’
Hook-face looked to bulldog, jabbed a thumb in Caleb’s direction, “The fuck is this?”
Bulldog, off balance, looked to Hook-face and then to Caleb. “The fuck you sticking your nose in for?”
Caleb his hands still outstretched, “Just trying to help, save someone a bit of trouble.”
Both rounded on him fully, pivoting like forklifts. “What trouble? Who the fuck are you? Why you getting involved?”
“This ain’t your business.”
With neither one looking calmer, Caleb opted for soft rhythmic motions, waving his hands up and down and restating the need for calm. A motivational speaker drone flew by overhead belting out a constant stream of tinny insincerities from the world’s worst sub-woofers. It looked like someone had strapped jets to the off-kilter bastard offspring of a mutated breeze block and a stage light rig. “Believe in yourself! Never give up! Live, laugh, love! Success is around the bend! Success is waiting for you! You matter!” It hummed off into the distance and the deepening haze swallowed it.
Something heavy slammed into the side of his face. It didn’t hurt precisely, but the suddenness of the impact shocked like a bucket of cold water. From the onlooked and content catchers, little squeaks of surprise and delight. As he staggered, he opened his mouth to urge for peace, but the other stepped in and added a blow of his own. Caleb’s head snapped around, caught a fleeting look at a spectator leering, face split by a distorted grin.
The one and the other advanced on him together. The one snatched a handful of shirt. Caleb tried to back up and pull free, but it wasn’t happening. They let him struggle a bit, features flickering between boiling rage and circus clown joy. The one yanked him forwards, he stumbled towards them. Leering to match the crowd, they stepped to meet him.
He kept his feet for perhaps a couple of seconds. As a series of punches hammered into his head and torso he felt that was a respectable innings. Then he went down. The ground was a muffled solid thing, unfriendly and uncompromising, but amidst the swirling surroundings, it gave him a concrete direction to orient himself. Somehow, this was reassuring. A foot thudded into his shoulder. The crowd cheered. A man jeered, a woman laughed, another foot cannoned into his stomach. He curled around it, breath raking through his pipes, whistling from distended lips. He rolled away, mouth working like a hooked fish. He raised himself onto his elbows and knees long enough to wrench out a roulette chamber of coughs, pink spittle spattering the floor beneath him, before another car crash kick crunched into his ribs and he toppled onto his back. More laughter from the onlookers. It was like being in a sit com.
He tried to push himself back onto his hands and knees, but his arms were lead. One of them kicked him in the ribs again and he flopped fish-like back onto his side. Another kick crashed into the side of his head, his ears rang, the world fuzzed, and then, mercifully, the laughter stopped.
When he came to it was dark. He considered lying there for the rest of his life. His head hurt. His ribs hurt. Everything hurt. It was tempting to roll over, drag himself over to the edge of the quay and haul himself into the waves. To submerge himself in cool water and let himself drown. But the water slopping against the quay was oily and he knew if he peered over the edge of the concrete lip, he’d see a wide film of scum collecting there and spreading out into the water like a sickness. This reality competed with the lure of the pleasant numbness of death. The singular certainty in life. The only thing anybody could had any measure of control over. Death was the only possible escape.
He tried to imagine hitting the water, sinking into it. Turning the volume of the world down, dampening the sounds of grinding machinery, constant overlapping vehicle alarms, intermittent yells and screams from unseen people. Salt water swirling between his teeth, filling his mouth, forcing into his throat. No more struggle. It wasn’t a peace he would experience, but it was peace.
Finally, slowly, and with a long gurgle of pain, he rolled over and clambered to his knees. He knelt there a spell, swaying like a guru. He took a deep breath, hauled himself onto his feet. By some miracle, nobody had stolen his phone or the hammer or anything else. His lay discarded by a wall. Perhaps they’d been distracted. From somewhere nearby a dull light reflected off the wet concrete. The noise of the sucking tide and the sickening smell of discarded trash engulfed him again. He stood there rocking in it, trying to collect his thoughts through his throbbing skull and his aching ribs and his churning stomach. They all flashed a collective red welt on his consciousness. On the other hand, he was still alive. He didn’t know whether to be grateful for that fact, but there it was.
He grabbed the case and started hobbling in the direction of a quay that would take him into the city where he could get a taxi back to his pod. A hot shower, hot food, a long sleep. No thoughts, no dreams, just squid-ink blackness. That was all he needed.
Something caught his eye as he slouched towards the distant promise of oblivion. Crumpled in the shadows of an alcove perhaps 20 feet away there was another body. Probably someone locked out of the pods, catching what sleep they could before the night men came to boot them awake. He rubbed a hand across his face, it was sticky with blood. He ran it through his hair. It was matted and stiff. He grunted at the night, spat. His head span briefly. He stood squeezing his eyes tight, waiting for it to pass and willing himself to keep his footing. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to get back up if he fell down again. When it passed, he trudged on.
The motivational speaker drone flew back overhead still spewing positive affirmations from the world’s worst sub-woofers, “Believe in yourself! Never give up! Live, laugh, love! Success is around the bend! Success is waiting for you! You matter!” He mumbled a handful of incoherent insults at it but his tongue felt too thick and unwieldy for his jaw.
As he stumbled past the slumped figure, the light reflecting on the wet concrete found a darker, more concentrated wetness and he stopped. Caleb gave a weary grunt, plodded over to the guy, and crouched down in front of him.
“Well, rather you than me,” he said to the corpse. It was the bulldog-looking guy who’d laid into him earlier. A bulky knife jutted from the guy’s chest. Caleb shrugged, grabbed the handle put one foot on the corpse’s shoulder, and wrenched. It came free with a soft purr of tearing flesh. His own shoulder screamed. The knife clattered to the floor from nerveless fingers. He stood clutching the injury, teeth grinding, ears ringing, trying to force himself through the pain. He bent, picked the knife back up. It was a heavy, clumsy thing with a wide curved blade, single edged, a vicious hook on the back side of the tip. He shook his head, stuck it in his inside pocket. He turned back to the corpse, ran the pockets. There wasn’t much. A balaclava in one back pocket, and in another, a battered phone and a lighter. Whoever had stabbed the guy had either been scared off or hadn’t cared about his stuff. He shrugged and transferred the lot to his own pockets.
He shuffled down to the corner of the waterfront. It took a lot longer than it should have. A thought struck him. He sent Paul a message, told him to call him when he had a second. Paul called back almost immediately.
Paul’s opener was too eager. “Hey, hey, my man – looking for work?”
“Nope.”
Paul tried to bury the mixture of irritation and disappointment in his voice under an over-emphasised note of surprise, but he was selling too hard.
“Need something,” Caleb said.
Paul frowned through the screen at him, “The fuck happened to you?”
Caleb shook his head, “never mind.”
“You need help?”
“No. It’s fine. Ignore all this,” he said, waving at what he presumed was a mass of bruises and blood where his face had been a while ago.
Paul chew that over for a couple of seconds. “Alright, then.” A flick of the chin, “What you want?”
“You know anyone who sells hardware?”
Paul cocked an eyebrow, “Of course,” he smiled suddenly, “What do you need?”
“Nothing fancy.”
“You don’t carry?”
“Not for bit. Sold it.”
“Idiot.”
Caleb shrugged. Waited.
Paul shook his head, “I’ll send you some details. Solid guy. Tell him you know me, he might give you a discount.”
“Thanks.”
“See you around.”
The screen went blank. He wiped the grime off of it, stuck it back in his pocket, grunting at nothing again. He spat once, patted the lump in his coat, and headed on.
Words and Chaos 
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