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milk fingers
1. The rabbit king
‘.and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves’
e.e. Cummings
The smell of books and age is thick and heavy on my tongue, like a promise forgotten to a child who never forgets - it rises and falls as people flick through pages and snap hard covers shut, crocodile mouths biting at silver-scaled fish. The backroom hums with the copy machine, five pence a sheet, grumbling and coughing up ink and dust, the coffee-maker soothing it into the next day with timid little huffs. At our library, everything has years under its belt, has age encrusted in the pores of its skin. Everything is decaying.
I sigh and flick up solitaire again, having failed for the fifth time in a row. The computer mutters incoherent insults pretending to be helpful little blips and codes, the screen flashing an off-white, turning violent green with the king of hearts grinning - leering - up at me.
Everything is so, so old.
Next to me Maria is filing q-cards the colour of rainbows with scribbled notes on, whispering the dates of over-dues, the names of the sinners who lost volumes about ancient Egypt and architecture in Oxford. Her hands have wrinkles that fold away secrets, her nails painted chipped purple, the beads of rosemary and clear plastic clacking gently as she reaches up to the top shelf. Her arms are long and thin, the bone hard against her skin, so close to the surface that when she knocks it on the desk you can hear the hollow ‘thunk’ of wood knocking wood - the sound of bone bending and bruising.
Maria wears dresses that are baggy around her body and hang like curtains of lace in those chamber rooms locked away from public eyes, high in castles where the lords and ladies are dust in the earth. They billow about her knees and fold around her waist, more like a kimono than standard English dresses that most women wear. Her neck is hung with beads and chains with crosses and spiritual icons staring dead and cold, gleaming silver, cheap plastic from second hand shops on the outskirts of town. Her hair is pinned back, oily black and thick, her skin golden brown, her eyes pits against her skull. She would have been beautiful, give or take twenty years.
She talks about books like she talks about her god. Something tangible, something perfect and wonderful and right there in your hands so you can whisper your secrets. She flutters in between the shelves and pecks at covers and blurbs like a malnourished bird locked inside a wire cage. She eats words like monsters eat people. Hungry, burning, frantic.
“Get that sad look off your face, honey.” she whispers, patting my shoulder with her claw-nails, her lips twisted into a smile, her eyes radiating warmth like hot milk from the pan.
“I’m not sad,” I mutter, clicking two of spades to the three of hearts. I’m losing again. “I’m bored. I want to go home.”
I didn’t ask for a job at the library. I never wanted it, or any job for that matter. I would’ve rather spent my summer smoking pot and slumped on the bonnets of my friend’s cars, languid and lazy as all boys fresh from finishing school should be. University was forgotten, I had been excepted to my choices, they had welcomed me with open arms. All I needed to do was pack and have fun. Say goodbye to childhood friends, given my cat to my parents with a hard look and a promise of no phone calls or visits should they mistreat her. It should have been the perfect summer.
But my dad had different plans.
“You can’t go home, honey, your shift isn’t finished for another four hours.” her voice is like clotted cream on your skin, something that slips and leaves a trail of cool, sweet froth. I sigh sleepily and click the x on my game. Lost again.
“I know, I’m not complaining.” I am. I am, I am. “I’m just tired.”
“Chin up, sweetie, its your lunch break in fifteen minutes.”
At lunch I go out into the parking lot and sit on my car, smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap coffee from the café across the road. The weather is hot, too hot for British summers. My shirts cling to my chest, my jeans heavy on the backs of my knees. It is the perfect weather for lying on grassy parks, smirking up at the sky, letting the sun kiss your skin and turn it brown.
Not for sitting in heat-simmering car parks with old ladies giving you dirty looks as they clamber into their rusting cars.
No one has come to the desk since this morning. No one has gotten books out. The only people who have ambled in are old men looking for a quiet table to read their papers, teenage boys hung over and looking for a safe place to pass out, young mothers dropping off their wailing, screaming children in the nursery on the floor above. There are even some nerdy looking kids at the computers, eyes bulging in their sockets, the bags under them hanging like black clouds, skin sickly pale.
But on such a lovely day, no one has come to browse through dusty shelves. They are out on the streets, drinking cold water and sending lingering, burning looks at their topless neighbour doing the gardening next door.
To them, the library is nothing.
I hate this.
To pass the time to lunch, I click up the patron’s details and scroll through the names of all the people registered with us. Walker, Kristy likes to read autobiographies of soap stars gone bust. Andy, Susan likes horror, especially Steven King as she has borrowed every novel of his we have and asked for ones we haven’t. Paine, Eric likes manuals about computers and books on astrophysics, although he has dappled in science fiction. Joans, James likes romantic comedy and pulp fiction and White, Adam likes graphic novels and Japanese manga, especially gore-fests, I note.
The clock ticks on impassively and I can feel time crawling, limbs lodged in treacle, furiously trundling ahead but making no progress whatsoever. Fuck.
“Hey, excuse us, can I get these out?” I blink and swivel around on my chair, only wincing a little bit as the desk collides painfully with my shin.
A man about my age stands there, his lips curled up pleasantly, his eyes bright. I sigh and lean forwards, grabbing his books and flapping the covers open.
He is wearing a red t-shirt with tiny yellow lemons scattered all over it. Over his shoulder is a green backpack that clatters with beads and key rings like Maria clatters with religious items.
“Card?” I mutter, holding out my hand and glaring at the computer screen. He slaps it to me like we are high-fiving, his grin big and shining when I look up at him. His skin is pale, his nose red and peeling dead skin where he has been burnt, his cheeks rosy and slick where he has piled copious amounts of sun cream on them. His hair is dyed red and fading back to brown, thick and feathery, curling around his ears. His eyes are bright blue, the kind of blue you instantly relate to seas and paper boats and sand between toes.
The computer beeps viciously as I scan each book. Five in all.
“Do you get paid for being so rude?” he asks cheerfully, his voice like car tires rolling slowly over gravel.
“No, I don’t.” I say coldly, sliding each book down so he can tuck them away in his pack. Its covered in patches about saving whales and trees and badges about Comic Relief and other shit fund raising things that he probably only pretends to care about. He has written on it too, lyrics and poetry or whatever, like those creepy scene kids that hang out around the theatre block at my old school, those who think they are interesting and unique because they went to Topshop and brought pre-battered chucks and pre-worn skinny jeans.
One says downward thousands of enormous dreams.
So he’s one of those profound hippy types. Fucking marvellous. I sigh and scan the last of his books, sliding it towards him and clicking the ‘ok’ on the computer. The stamp is cool between my fingers as I press it back into its holder and move to watch him leave.
He doesn’t.
He is staring at me with a thoughtful expression on his face, his eyes scanning my neck and arms. I shift and freeze so that he slides his gaze back up to my head.
“You got any tattoos?” he croaks, dragging his pack along the desk and flipping it over his shoulder.
“No.” I say blankly. “Have a nice day sir.” I turn away from him and flick up solitaire again.
“Me either, but that’s because I don’t want HIV or hepatitis or anything. I was thinking about it though.”
Oh my god. I feel something hot and filthy flicker in my stomach, my throat tightening with irritation as I hold back words that are bitter on my tongue. He moves forwards so he is in front of me, leaning over my desk and smiling his toothy smile right in my face. I push my chair back and glare at him.
“Did you need help? The information desk is over there. I just check out.”
He taps his chin and grins bigger. What a fucking cunt.
Maria giggles in the backroom, the coffee machine trundling laughter out with her.
Jesus, god, I hate it here. “Look, sir, if that’s all I’ll have to ask you to move on because, you know, I’ve got work to do.” I haven’t. This place is so dead it could be inside a dusty old tomb and I’d still be clacking away at this century-old computer.
“Really? That’s awful, seeing as you don’t get paid.” he hums and stands up straight, pushing his hair from his eyes. “Well then, I guess I’ll leave you to it.” he peers down at me and I note with disdain that he has his ear pierced. His earring is a mushroom. A fucking mushroom.
“Yes, please.” I deadpan, busying my hands with papers that mean nothing to me. He nods simply and lifts his hand goodbye. His fingers are stained with ink. God.
“Bye, library boy.” he smiles and leaves and oh my god, he’s wearing bowling shoes. What a fucking moron.
I stare at the door with contempt, a sour taste fluttering in my mouth like a butterfly, my fingers clenching angrily as I twiddle with a piece of paper. This place is full of freaks.
“Oiy, sweetheart, its your lunch now.” Maria pops her head around the door, a mug of coffee in her hand, her smile as bright as the sunlight outside.
I slump forward and groan. Thank god.
The coffee from the café is a mixture of putrid death and creamy calmness. Considering the taste, its hard to believe that anyone would even bother buying the shit, but I do. I do because I’m an addict and when you’re an addict to caffeine, it doesn’t matter what shape or form you get it in, as long as you get it. I would inject it straight into the fleshy pulp of my eye, so long as I get it.
So here I am, buying cheap coffee and staring glumly outside as the world trundles past me, girls in flowery shirts swirling on the cobble streets, boys in shorts riding their bikes and drinking lemonade from old water bottles. I wish I were them.
“Here you go, darlin’” the coffee-woman plops my Styrofoam cup down and clatters over towards a pensioner holding up his cup for more tea.
I sigh and dump my change on the side before ambling out into the sunlight.
“Hey again, library boy.”
I cringe and turn and there is crazy-face grinning down at me. He’s standing on the wall next to my library, his bowling shoes glittering, his grin even more so.
“Are you stalking me?” I mutter, digging my free hand through the pockets of my jeans and pulling out a tattered pack of cigarettes and a failing orange lighter that I got from the pound shop.
“No, I was just contemplating lunch when I saw you come out of the library. You looked pissed so I figured you could use a pick-me-up.” He shakes a bottle of flavoured water at me and I glare at him, motioning to my coffee cup before pointing to the cigarette hanging limp and lifeless between my lips.
“Got ‘em.”
Without looking back, I trundle towards the back of my building, out towards the car park where my beat up old piece of crap lies dormant, waiting for me to lean against it.
There’s nothing like the emptiness of waiting to ruin a perfectly good summer.
I don’t see him again for another two days. The space between the clock on my computer screen becomes a place of fascination. There are cracks spanning the length of the wall, crusting the off-yellow paint and running like twisted spider legs left squished against the wall where some cruel kid pushed his thumb.
I have lost 32 games of solitaire, been the point of complaint five times and have now been forbidden from reading out loud to the kids upstairs, and still no one has sacked me.
Maria clicks he tongue like an oversized chicken, her claw-fingers worrying her pen as she writes nonsense onto her q-cards. She stopped talking to me three days ago when I tried to argue that God is dead. I told her it was in a book by Nietzsche, but she just told me that if God were dead, we would be too because we are him and he is us.
I sigh and click three of hearts to four of clubs.
I’m losing again.
The heat is sweltering and burning, the kind of heat that feels like it is swelling under your skin and making it too tight around your flesh. Instead of jeans I am wearing pressed black suit trousers that I got from Oxfam for three pounds, knocked down because there was a tear in the knee. I patched that up with old floral material I found in my garage, and now they are like a breeze wrapped around my legs.
“Hey library boy, long time no see.” I blink. My eyes itch with lack of sleep and weed and staring too long at a computer screen.
Today he is wearing an orange tank-top with black words vomiting up Happy Halloween, even though its July. His lips are splitting open, blood flaking rust and cracking as his smile gets wider. His nose is still burnt, his cheeks tinged red. He has freckles, I notice. His arms are covered in leather bands and tribal beads, all colours and shapes. He twists them up and lifts his shirt, showing me an empty stomach and jutting, swelling hips.
On his left side is a leaping rabbit tattoo, stretching from the edge of his hip to his belly button.
“Check it out,” He smirks, “I caught the courage bug and got one, now I‘m the rabbit king.” I peer at it, twisting my lips together and sighing.
“Do you have some books or what?” I murmur, leaning back in my chair to crack the bones in my spine. The clock ticks slowly, grinning click-grins as it crawls infuriatingly slow.
“You ever read Watership Down? Well, it was my favourite book when I was a kid. And in the beginning of the film it had these little characters, not like the rest of the film. I asked for that style. Homage to the greatest rabbit story ever.”
I have seen Watership Down. I didn’t rate is as a kid (mostly because it scared the shit out of me, but I’m not going to tell him that.)
“Books?” I snap. My hair is clinging to my forehead with sweat, my skin prickling and my back hot and slick.
He pushes his books onto the desk.
“These are returned.” he mutters, then pushes another three books following. “These going out.”
I grab the first pile and set about scanning them in.
“You’re not all that talkative, are ya?”
I click ok and ignore him.
“You’re the silent type, I geddit.” he purrs, pushing his books into his pack. “Wanna create an image. Sure, sure, yeah. I geddit.”
I grit my teeth and stamp the last book.
“Thank you sir, have a nice day.” or go chock on your fucking vegetarian free range fruit juice, you goddamn hippy shit.
“Or maybe you’re just shy?” he muses.
“I’m not shy, or the silent type, or making an image. Or anything. Just go away, please. I have work to do.”
He gives me an amused smirk, sliding the last of his books into his bag, zipping it up and flinging it over his shoulder.
“You just don’t like me, huh?”
I sigh and click the refresh on my game, wondering how long it will take for me to go mad and stab him up with the perfectly sharpened pencils Mary leaves along my desk. Thirty seconds, maybe.
“I suppose that must be it,” I muse, my lips curling into a fake smile.
“Well, that’s not very nice, is it? You don’t even know me.” He’s still grinning cheerfully, the wanker.
“I don’t need to know you to fucking know what you’re about, sir. So piss off, read your fucking ‘alternative’ fiction and leave me alone, because you’re seriously starting to get on my tits, mate.”
Ok, so less than thirty seconds. I grip the sides of my desk and don’t look at him, staring resolutely at the buzzing computer screen. The heat is really fraying my nerves and the fact I haven’t had a cigarette since last night is making me want to claw someone’s eyes out. Mostly hippy-shit’s here.
When I finally glance up at him he’s staring at me with slim, narrowed eyes.
“Wow, you are rude.” He mutters dully, rolling his shoulders and fiddling nervously with the beads on his arm. “You know what happens to rude people?”
I groan and swizzle my chair full circle before stopping in front of him again. The clock ticks hungrily, slow like the steady beat of the sea.
“I don’t know.” I sneer, picking up my bottled water and taking a swig of it. It is lukewarm. “Do they prosper and become great leaders?”
“No, they don’t.” His voice is ice now and I relish the thought of getting into a fight with him. Haven’t had a good fight since back in sixth form, during an art class when Sammy French put his foot through my art sculpture, the bastard. “They end up dying alone in an attic with cats eating their faces.”
“I think you’ve got rude people confused with spinsters, mate.”
He stares at me for a long time before snorting wildly and stomping off towards the exit. I giggle fruitlessly to myself before Maria comes in saying she’s got biscuits she baked and would I like one? I slump off to the bathroom for a piss and a sneaky cig before I can go on my lunch break.
“Think I offended the mafia’s son.”
Laura looks up at me, surprised, her lips still pursed as she tries to rub biro off of her thigh. It says ‘shark girl’ with a little picture of a shark next to it. Jimmy put it there when she passed out last night and told us the story of how she was giving him a blow job and scraped her teeth up him and almost took his skin away.
I like Laura. She’s sassy.
“What?” She hums, licking her fingers.
“This kid came into the library the other day and I accidentally dropped a book on him and now I keep getting these weird blokes coming up to me and offering me favours. Like, you know how in the films they offer you a favour and trap you into killing some beloved barber or something? I think its that.”
She snorts, rubbing her skin furiously before giving up and shimmying her skirt back down.
“This isn’t Godfather six, sweetheart. They’re probably just coincidences.”
“Godfather six?” I sneer. “What the fuck?”
“Oh, I dunno how many there are.”
“There are three, Laura, and they are cinematic masterpieces, Jesus fucking Christ.” I snarl, sitting up and chucking my half-smoked cigarette vaguely in her direction. She watches it fall before turning to give me a snotty smirk, bending backwards to pick it up and stub it out in her homemade ashtray.
“They’re so long it felt like I was watching eight films with every sitting.”
“Fuck you, you don’t know shit about films. You’re favourite film is The Breakfast Club.”
“What’s wrong with that?” She sniffs, folding up her long black hair into a ponytail.
We’re sat in her room and she’s getting ready for her job, she’s a waitress at a small café in the centre of the city. She says it’s a sushi bar but I’ve never seen any fish there, just soup and rice and weird noodle concoctions that have whole chillies floating in the broth. I’m slumped on her bed, half dressed with a packet of cigarettes next to me and a can of coke cradled on the slight curve of my belly.
“What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong is you pick some eighties trollop over some of the greatest films in the history of time. I mean, you’ve got so many good films on your shelf and some of them still have the cellophane on them. Its sickening.”
“I don’t have time to watch films, Irvine, I have a job and I need the money for my gap year.”
“You’re still going to Italy?” I murmur, putting my can on her bedside table and rolling onto my belly. I press my face into her pillow and breathe deeply. It smells like her, sweet and thin like perfume that’s sprayed on too lightly so you can only catch a waft of it before it disappears.
“Course I am, sweetheart, I’ve got that internship. Its going to be immense.”
“What about me?” I whine.
“What about you? You’re going down to London when summer finishes. You’re going to start your own life. Besides, I’ll write you letters and stuff.”
“Slip in some nude Polaroid pictures and I might be ok with it.”
Laura laughs, slipping over to her desk to put her make-up on. She’s very pretty, Laura is. She’s got a sort of Mediterranean look about her, because her dad was from Portugal and her mother from Jamaica. She’s got beautiful dark skin and olive-eyes that slant like a cat’s and meaty hips and thighs that are perfect for dancing with. We’ve been friends since primary when she ate my chocolate bar and threw up all over my new shoes.
“Go fuck yourself, Irvine.”
“With pleasure,” I slide off her bed and forage for my shirt from her floor. “I’ve got my own job to scurry along to, anyway.”
“Oh, the library, sure.” She snorts, eyeing me from her mirror. “What about the mafia boy?”
I shrug my shoulders and pull my shirt over my head, shaking my arms to get them through the holes.
“Oh, you know, I don’t really think he’s part of the mafia. His dad could’ve messed me up when I took his kid back to him, so I don’t see why he’d wait this long.” My voice is muffled by my shirt so when I pop my head out she’s staring at me with something akin to disgust, but mostly amusement. “Don’t think I’ll be seeing much of him anymore.” It had made quite the bump. I had hoped Maria might sack me but she just patted my thigh and said that these things happen and accidents can’t be helped. The parents didn’t sue.
“Well, you know the mafia, Irvine, they wait for the perfect moment.” Laura grins, chucking me my keys before turning back to put her mascara on.
“Shut up. I’ll see you later, alright sunshine?”
“Good luck! If you go missing should I tell the police to look in the river?”
I ignore her and make my way downstairs.
“Oh, rude boy, you look tired.”
I look up and the hippy-shit smiles blandly back at me.
“Oh for the love of-”
“I got some books, mate, would you mind?” He thumps a stack of books onto the desk, as well as pulling out the ones I checked the other day. How can one human being read so much? It is physically impossible to consume that much information, I’m sure of it. I casually glance at the titles as I scan them in. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, beep. Fairy Tales by the Grimm Brothers, beep. A book on Hinduism, beep, and finally a small book of poetry by some bloke called Cummings.
“Is this all you do?” I say snidely, pushing them back towards him after stamping each one. “Read books until your brain implodes?”
“Not really, no.” His voice is sarcastic and he snatches them up and shoves them rather violently back into his bag. “Sometimes I eat berries and have conversations with trees. You know. Hippy shit.”
He’s wearing a lumberjack shirt, red and blue, with some heavy jeans and I can see the sweat making it stick to his torso. His beads look slippery and he’s panting a little, face flushed like the heat has finally got to him.
“Well,” I reply coolly, slowly extending my arm to give him his library card back. “Whatever makes you happy.” He snatches that from me too, pushing it into his jean pocket. Those jeans are pretty tight. “Isn’t it a bit hot for you to be wearing those?” I say lazily, pointing down. He flushes even more and drops his head, staring furiously down at his feet. “You going to a concert or something?”
“I’ve-” He begins, before looking back up, frowning angrily. “S’none of your business, mate.”
“Alright,” I coo, my voice comically high pitched. “Just askin’, dear me. Someone’s a bit feral this morning.”
He makes an odd whine in the back of his throat before turning heel and flouncing off towards the exit. I lean over the desk to see his shoes - oh, classy shoes, nice - and my gaze wanders north to his arse and I fine myself purring appreciatively.
Pity he’s an annoying hippy, I think cheerfully, pulling up a game of solitaire. He’s pretty fit.
an:
OMG, GUESS WHAT? This has no death, o.t.t angst or guns in it. how shocked are you?
Just trying to show you guys I am capable of writing lighthearted stuff (that's a lie, I really can't, this is shit, will continue to be shit until I feel so worthless i take it down) and not mind melting tragedies. Shall i bother continuing? seriously, i'm not very good at anything funny. i wish i was because then i could be a standup comedian but, alas. what i really mean by posting this is that i'm not some miserable weirdo that writes shit loads of angsty stuff. well, i am, but occasianlly i do pop out something a little lighthearted.
well. enjoy and shit.
