Caged Birds

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Two girls lay together: one staring in silent wonder, the other lost on the highways of her inner consciousness. “What would you do if I kissed you right now?” Cookie asked, her voice cutting through the paper thin silence with an anxious sort of curiosity.

“I don’t know,” Lily replied.

“Seriously, what would you do?” she persisted, a smile stretching her pert little mouth.

“I seriously don’t know,” Lily focused on her then and watched the smile fall from her lips, “what would you do if I let you?”

Cookie shrugged. Nothing. It was the answer that hung unspoken between both girls. Lily smiled and settled down bringing a cigarette to her lips.

The wind whistled through the houses outside, Lily and Cookie were shut inside the stifling warmth of Lily’s room, caught in the rings and reams of cigarette smoke and silence.The girls had grown up together on the narrow London street, they first held hand in nursery, their large eyes meeting across a concrete playground. Both different from the rest, both looking for something different: something beyond...

The four walls surrounding them were painted jade, all scuffed and exposed plaster. Messages were scrawled in marker pens and faded carbon marks, half-hidden beneath posters and cut outs. Eyes from faces she would never meet, stared at her, witnessing every intimate part of her. Lily didn’t mind.

Lily was a strange girl, spider leg lashes veiled quick fevered eyes, her lips parted on songs half sung and her heart was fuelled by Curiosity. “I suppose I don’t fancy women,” she said and yawned behind her hand, the chipped polish of her nails glittering like her eyes.

Cookie was cunning, round and beautiful, her large, dark liquid eyes always intense and intent they fixed on Lily, “do you think I’m ugly?”

She studied her face scrupulously, “of course you are.” Cookie squealed and wrestled her playfully. “Fucking hideous.” Their panting faded and they settled into a companionable silence where Lily flicked ash from her cigarette and offered it to the other girl.

“I don’t smoke,” she said and waved her hand in front of her face, “and neither should you.”

Daddy Dear had once told Lily everyone was dying of cancer, some were just lucky enough to die before discovering it. She took another long drag and shrugged, “don’t want to live forever.”

“You want to be the tragic heroine so badly,” she whispered.

“No, I’m already too old to play that role,” she said with a wistful smile.

They would not know one another for much longer. Both thirteen, their lives stretched out before them, neither of them sparing a thought for it. Their lives were the four walls of this cramped room, the alcohol they tipped down their throats with kamikaze abandon, the substances placed in rolling papers, the intricate maze of London streets - those dark corners only they knew - the rigid red line on a tube map, the dog eared pages of a road map, of poetry, of prose... “What are you thinking?”

“Why do you always ask when you don’t want to hear the truth?” Lily asked irritable, grinding the cigarette into the carpet.

“Because I’m curious.”

Lily stared at the ceiling, the sloppy paint job, the peeling crust of off-white and water marks drew a familiar pattern to her. Sometimes she could make out pictures from the stains, often she made features that stared down at her: one of the many faces of the intangible Dog. The big Dog in the sky with the answers to the mysteries of life. She searched for that face in the sky, through the layers of smog and cotton clouds, her eyes ever watchful for that crooked smile.

“I think we should go out,” Lily whispered.

“Go where?” Cookie’s fingertips stroked Lily’s bare arm.

“Anywhere. Everywhere. Wherever you want,” she replied taking hold of Cookie’s hand and squeezing the already clammy fingers. “Let’s get out of here.”

o

Across the city, Lark spent his last night in a tenement cage.

He would not miss the cramped, stale apartment that was slowly crumbling with carelessness and old age. Bad memories lingered like bad smells in the crevices of these small rooms, the things he wanted to forget and things he had forgotten were caked in the tiles.

He walked bare foot into his room, closing himself in darkness, stepping nimbly around the debris and climbing into bed, fully clothed and too exhausted to care.

His father snored loudly in the next room, a dripping tap and gurgling of a water pipe echoed in the dark. He turned on the cheap radio he didn't bother to pack, only half listening to the half familiar tunes that faded beneath the bulk of his thoughts.

The rest of his possession were packed into cardboard boxes marked by Xs and neatly piled in a corner, his eyes were fastened to them and the shadows that played across their edges.

His mind buzzed with sadness and anticipation. In the morning he would belong to the long stretch of Dickie Street, a place he had never known existed. A new life awaited him, and he hardly knew what it meant. He had only ever known the sorrows of living in the building that reeked of sour piss, broken sewage pipes and smoke.

A tenement cage, it was a place of suffering, a prison for the poor and pathetic who sought to hide themselves in drugs, drink and a desperate kind of decadence.

Lark had lived there all his life.

The stain of his birth still smeared the living room carpet, the last breath of his late mother hung in the air and her perfume, like lavender mingling with the London smog, almost faded. Tears stained the mattress he lay across, tears he had shed out of sadness and after the nasty beatings his father had given when he had been able to raise his arm above his elbow, when his frail fingers had managed to clutch a leather strap or stick.

Years of despair resonated in this place, it had built a presence that had ever been a thread in their lives. Lark's life hadn't known joy since he had last seen his mother smile at him or the first time he had cradled his first guitar.

The kids here had learned to find distraction in a manner of ways, all of them illegal, Lark had found his in the distorted sound of an electric guitar, the chords that rippled from beneath his fingertips and sang into the night of loneliness and longing.

The move had been expected, he had never thought his father would leave the place where his wife had died or let Lark escape the cage his father had so fastidiously created. After Mother's death their home became a prison of despair, his life a penitential sentence for a crime he did not commit.

Pressing his head into the plumpness of a pillow that faintly smelt of his sweat, he closed his eyes, his thoughts surrendering to the sound of Joy Division playing on the radio.

o

From Lily’s bedroom window the lights from the distant stadium danced like spectres celebrating the navy sky, seeking out their brothers through the canvass of thin cotton clouds. From an open window Tony Curtis could be heard. Like a siren song, hypnotic and luring with its solemn melody, its languid chords, his velvet, vocal vespers revelling in the despondence of youth. A spokesperson for lost souls.

Lily leant out of her window legs resting on a desk, socks mismatched and inside out pulled up to her scarred knees. She twirled a Marlboro between her fingers watching those roaming lights, humming along to that familiar song. Behind her Cookie was on the bed, her lips parted and trembling in sleep, lashes shuddering in dreams.

Boredom was a disease that had infiltrated their lives. There are times when the world stopped and there was nothing to do but hang upon the bitter edge of anxiety and anticipation.

Her room was a cage and she was the bird who had lost its song.