KICKSTART

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Nobody seemed to have noticed that they hadn’t seen Rudy for months.

Afterwards his friends claimed that they had been concerned for his welfare, and yet his final, untouched ready meal lay forgotten far beyond the stage of rotting and liquifying, to dry up and become a solid glaze on the plate.

The neighbours said that they had checked on him when they could, and yet they didn’t notice that his car hadn’t left the drive for months, that his bathroom window was open still, although autumn and winter had passed, or that the bluebottles in his living room were battering themselves against the window, drunk from gorging on dead flesh.

His family said they loved him, but they didn’t show up to break the door down and discover his broken body lying in dried blood, or the empty vodka bottles which littered the room.

Nathan was an addict who happened to see the open window. His courage and conscience banded together to fight and lose a familiar, half-hearted battle, before he climbed in to see if he could aquire something to sell, to pay for an overdue hit.

Instead he discovered what remained of Rudy, lying in full view in the middle of the floor, basked in an eerie blue light from the moon, ribs arched upward and neck twisted, skeletal head facing him, proffering a sarcastic, toothless grin which would linger in Nathan’s memory evermore. Beneath and around him the carpet was darkly stained by fluids which had once been Rudy’s vital organs.

Terror sent adrenalin coursing through Nathan’s veins. Although afterwards he could not remember what exit he used, he got out of the house more quickly and less cautiously than he had entered, and he ran until his stomach could no longer contain its contents, while at the same time, his quivering legs gave up on him. Crouching on hands and knees he delivered his half-digested takeaway onto the grass verge where he had landed, not noticing or caring that vomit was splashing all over his hands and jacket.

He crawled towards some nearby bushes and leaned against them while he waited to recover.

His first thoughts had been irrational, of killers hiding behind curtains, of sharp blades and blunt instruments. Now, as his breathing returned to normal and his heart stopped pounding, he saw the tragedy for what it was. The empty bottles and the undiscovered corpse told the story.

Nathan stayed to watch the sun rise, and then, empty handed and ill, he went back to his bedsit. He ran a bath in the communal bathroom and undressed, dropping his clothes into a bin bag. He bathed and washed his hair, then put on the cleanest clothes he could find. He walked to the police station, told the police that he had broken into a house and found a dead body.

Rudy was buried twelve days later. Nathan was unable to attend the funeral, because he had booked himself into rehab, and that was the day that his journey into the future began.

© Jane Paterson Basil