SATURDAY
Bills scattered across the dining room table like old polaroids, made readable by the dim bulb in the pantry at his back which hung without its shade. Not the spotlight overhead in the kitchen. It was too late for such a harsh, singular light. It was not the right time to be doing it, but there would never be a right time. Figures printed in sum payable boxes were black and bold yet fading on his calculator screen. Frank ran the numbers more times than he could recall but none would budge, no matter how desperately he willed just one just one decimal point to shift in his favour. He had accounted for a minimum monthly expenditure, revised of the most basic luxuries – the takeaways, branded sodas, warm showers – and estimated two ways out of this; one income based on reduced hours at the warehouse (amid scrimping and saving to the last penny); the other a combination of savings and what little he could claim on universal credit until he found a new job, alongside ever harsher scrimping and still harsher saving. Were there jobs out there for men of his age, or vintage, who had never done anything else? It was pointless. And forever might be. But he did not have forever. He had seventy-two hours. Three days to make his decision, or to work the numbers over again and again to their inevitable betrayal. That near destitution could be calculated, with such minute room for error every time, dried his throat and caused him to choke. He took a sip of his water and wished it was whisky. The fridge lightly rattled, and his cough filled the room. Through the archway to the living room, a blood curdling scream.
It was very late. It may no longer have been his son’s birthday. Bunting which hung limp across the living room window twinkled in the moonlight. Frank drew the curtains. The shallow caverns of his son’s eyes and dimpled cheeks were lit in harsh orange by the grinding of a combination shotgun/chainsaw upon a demon’s skull. Blood and bone and bits of brain splattered the television screen and mercenaries’ gun barrel.
‘Whatever happened to that game your friends played where you built houses out of blocks?’ Frank’s tone inflected a judgment most commonly reserved for whenever Noel claimed he was too tired to brush his teeth.
‘They play this now,’ replied Noel. His head did not twist from the glory and gore. His fingers held the controller in a vice grip. Frank lay a hand upon his shoulder.
‘You didn’t tell me this is what I was buying.’
‘You didn’t ask,’ said Noel. ‘Five more minutes,’ he yawned, and tried to smile through it, but the yawn won out. Frank enjoyed that but knew better than to show it.
‘In five minutes, I’ll have to carry you, and you’re too big for that now,’ Frank leant on the sagging rear of the couch just over his son’s small, sharp shoulders.
Noel huffed and the massacre paused. His arms stretched and popped in their stiff sockets. As he slumped off to bed he stopped suddenly, but not suspiciously. What little remained of his birthday cake lay on the sideboard before the stairs blanketed under napkins. Slices cut had fallen and piled like stone ruins.
‘Just one,’ Frank told him without turning from the T.V. He understood nothing about modern video games it seemed, but he knew his son all too well. ‘A little one. But don’t forget to-’
‘I know, I know!’ exclaimed Noel as he wrapped the last remaining corner piece in a napkin. It was the quickest he had ever ran up to brush his teeth. ‘Save my game!’ he called back. As if Frank even knew how to turn on the damn thing.
Cake crumbs and stubborn dust shifted through slits in the old wooden staircase onto Noel’s bag which sat underneath against the shoe rack. Noel had to have his bag packed and ready to go the night before Frank worked the dayshift on Sundays. Church shoes, dog-eared homework jotters in a plastic wallet, and a bag of chocolate buttons held back for any moment in the day where he might be freed from the watchful eye of his Aunt Salma. That boy eats too little of my food because you fill him with junk. Frank stepped over to the bag, it did not look as full as it ought to. He usually made Noel check it all before bed, but it was late and getting later. Frank’s Father insisted upon him that the best time to prepare for tomorrow was yesterday, but today would make do if it had to. He tried to pass that knowledge down. He would not know how successful he had been until tomorrow, whenever that came around.
As he took a slice of cake, his first of the day with a small imprint of even smaller teeth on one side, Frank considered that a little bit more preparation yesterday, last month, or even years ago might not have made those sums so hard to swallow this evening. The cake, however, went down like ice cold water on a blisteringly hot July afternoon. Chocolate with raspberry jam, the icing was thicker than his thumb. Noel’s favourite, his too, though he never admitted to such a sweet tooth. Was that another lesson? The cake was just like his wife used to make it, but also nothing like it at all once Salma inherited Michaela’s scribbled recipes and set upon liberal measurements.
Frank took a seat on the couch which was warm where he had let Noel waste his evening once the family had all gone. He took his glasses from their perch on his breast pocket and snapped them into shape. They were cool on his temples which were hot and red with overthinking. On the mantel over the electric fireplace lay a framed picture of his wife in her graduation cap and gown. Michaela’s deep brown eyes soothed Frank now as they always had. He wanted to ask her if the party had been good enough. He did not want to ask her about the bills, or what to do next, because she would have known. More than any singular thing in this universe – better than he knew that the sky was blue, unless in Stirling where it was more often grey, Frank knew that Michaela would have known how to fix this. What pained him more, so much it set his stomach to turn, was knowing that she would not have let their family get into this mess to begin with. There were so many things he wished not to share with her, but he spoke with her still.
‘Are you as pissed as me that he’s growing up so damn quick?’
He lingered on her smile but did not wish it to twitch. He would never try to suppose her replies. He dared not put words in her mouth whilst she was here, so there was no chance of him starting now. He held close to his chest, deep down, a little faith that somehow she heard him, and this quietened his anxieties like nothing else, even if he knew they would not be gone for long. His stomach grumbled, more cake would just keep him up and the sausage rolls, the one or two left, had been sitting since noon. He looked over his shoulder to the stairs before hoovering the crumbs in his napkin, spilling a few down his striped shirt. On the television before him, a ring of fire circled a hollow bunker upon a red planet set on all sides by the corpses of mythical beasts. A typeface of broken bones and malformed torso read:
ARE YOU READY?
Frank considered a past reprimand on the holding down of power buttons on electronic devices. The controller had no singular button mapped for Start, Stop or Save. Under his thumb were errant shapes which seemed to signify nothing at all, and at the reach of his fingertips were a pair of triggers. The first button he pressed resumed the game and from thin air a mutant pig dressed in a top hat and tails with teeth like tusks bore down upon his figure of forearms and firepower. The right trigger seemed to be the only button which fired back. When he managed to land a shot on the creature it ensued to barf up dollar bills. The button upward of the left trigger tossed a grenade which did not kill but seemed to stun the creature. At the screens insistence he mashed two of the shaped buttons simultaneously, triangle and circle, and proceeded to lop off the greedy pig’s head with a chainsaw bandaged onto the shotgun. Its blood was pennies. His soldier had survived the onslaught, and for the first time in weeks, Frank’s racing pulse was not precursor to the dull pang of guilt. He was taken to a scene where grunts in military uniform welcomed him to discuss their battle plan.
SUNDAY
The canteen was busier than Frank had ever seen it. The practice of staggered breaks had completely broken down ever since news broke of part-closure for the warehouse. What does it matter if I’m five minutes late back to my station today, if they’re going to can me tomorrow? The queue for hot food stretched out into the entrance corridor, which the secretaries hated on account of all the chatter, but to hell with them, they were safe. They never got their hands dirty and one or two of them even had foot stools. The television over the vending machines which only ever played rolling news at deafening volume was drowned out by murmurs and moans. Each table was crowded. Every conversation was the same.
‘Take the redundancy package and get into the building trade. They need big strong boys,’ said Scott, and he nodded up to Frank who had been told on more than one occasion that his arms resembled tree trunks. There were twelve men at the table, Frank sat at the centre of this last supper of sorts. ‘You’ve seen the rate they’re flinging up these new builds.’
‘I’ll stay,’ said a young boy as he pulled up a chair. Frank did not know the boy’s name, only knew him as ‘Headphones’ on account of him never once having seen his ears. He still could not see them even now. The boy downed an energy drink in one or two sips. ‘Shit money is better than no money.’
‘Don’t be a mug,’ Scott dismissed him with a stab of three chips mashed upon the end of his fork, ketchup flickering over the length of the table. ‘This place will be very lonely in two days’ time.’ At that, the silent heads around the table nodded in unison, though a few of those nods could be attributed solely to chewing. Minds were being made up all around him.
‘Have you decided yet, Frank?’ asked a rasping voice from above.
The Nip cast his shadow long across the table and its thirteen men. He was known as such for the particular and persistent way by which he greeted workers on the warehouse floor; whose pound an hour less in wages equated to something akin to the caste system in his eyes. He would wait until you had your back turned, the heavier the load you carried the sweeter, and he would nip you on the shoulder. Meet me in my office or some or other similarly ominous invitation. It could make any man shiver quicker than those energy drinks were on Headphones, who was onto his second. He was not intimidating so much as he was off-putting. There was no winning with Nippy, even if his lectures on unflattering productivity percentages might soon be a distant memory. He was a weak man, made arrogant by rigid enforcement of the most meagre of authorities. And confirmation that his role would continue, against great insecurity for those within his purview, had made him as smug today as he had always been bitter. Arguing the cases for taking the redundancy package or conversely refusing that and agreeing to a new contract on significantly reduced hours and dues, would be fruitless with The Nip. And the last thing Frank needed at this time was another man’s pity. At once, he knew how to win.
‘Still thinking,’ he replied. Tossed like a grenade The Nip’s way.
‘Still thinking? Still thinking?’, The Nip repeated under his breath as though the words were metallic and inconsumable upon his tongue. He turned his back in retreat to the managers’ clique. That seemed to titillate Headphones and Scott alike, but before they could continue their tug of war, Frank checked his watch. For once he was glad his break had ended.
*
The front door wheezed and set his sister’s dogs barking as Frank stepped inside. He clapped their curly coats and let them out to play on the front lawn, making sure he had locked the gate this time. He did not need a lecture from Salma today. From the sight of church shoes abandoned two steps apart by the stairs, he knew that Noel would be in his cousin’s bedroom, being ignored and barred from touching any of his toys as per usual. Scents of the boiling of potatoes for mash and the frying of his sister’s old recipe lamb lifted Frank through the living room towards the double doors of the kitchen as though he were floating on air. He fell back down to a hard and scorched earth as Salma pulled the double doors closed behind her with a bang.
‘Mags tells me that you haven’t called.’ Her broad arms crossed, tight like steel rope, and her bright green eyes bore down upon Frank as spotlights.
He sighed and fell into his brother-in-law’s busted armchair, tape unsticking up his back. ‘I haven’t had the time.’ He shifted to flatten down the tape trapped between his tensed shoulders and under his elbows which held the arm rests into almost the correct shape. Anything not to meet Salma’s eye.
‘Francis Kwame Odom-’ Salma drew a deep breath and lowered herself on to the couch. She slid a plaster from the tip of her thumb into her palm then dug and twisted her fingernail into a red, dried scab. When she caught Frank staring she wrapped her hand in the tea towel from the pocket of her apron. She did that when they were kids, Frank recalled. Picked at her scabs. Would reopen old wounds as she saw fit, to what end, he never understood.
‘Why are you making this so much more difficult than it has to be?’
He was no better at answering her directly today as he was back when they were eight and ten, ‘I’m still thinking it over.’
‘You have had weeks, Francis!’ She pinched the brim of her nose and drew her eyelids to scrunch. ‘And months of rumour before that. You have thought too much, or not at all.’
Joni, his niece, slid open the doors from the kitchen much more timidly than her mother had handled them, and stepped into the living toom with an unsteady ladle of gravy dripping over a tea towel which she held out with her free hand. Too thick, much, much too thick said Salma in a wince before jerking her daughter’s wrist into Frank’s view. Splodges of gluey brown gravy hit the carpet, and on her wrist was a plaster.
‘Noel removed a splinter from Joni’s thumb this afternoon,’ she told him. ‘A very precise thing.’
‘I taught him that,’ replied Frank.
‘And I, you,’ she scorned. But did it stick? Frank asked himself. His sister shooed her daughter back into the kitchen with a mimed instruction to pour in more hot water but not too much. She drew another of Mags’ cards from her purse.
‘You have listened to me before Francis, and I beg that you do so again.’
‘How many of those do you have?’ he joked or tried to. Her hand would not budge.
Frank took the card.
Margaret Gallacher
Redundancy Advisor
Jobcentre Plus, Stirling
‘When are they expecting your decision?’
Frank drew a deep breath and held onto it as long as he could before he could not suffer it any longer. He would always give in to her, would always be the little brother running back to get bailed out by big sis.
He sighed, ‘Tuesday.’
‘You will see her tomorrow, Francis, even if I have to drag you there myself.’ This was not an idle threat. One of Frank’s earliest memories was being dragged by the collar to his Mother over the scalping of a favoured doll.
From upstairs, there was a loud bang and a soft wail. Glad of the distraction, Frank ascended the steps two at a time and found his son and his nephew, Malcolm, in a tug of war over a controller.
‘But I can beat it!,’ Malcolm whined under sharp breaths.
‘It’s my game!’ Noel struggled. Tears made silver streaks down to his neck.
‘You’re rubbish at it!’
Frank separated them and threatened their dinner plates to the dogs if they did not hug and make-up. Noel reached an arm over his cousin’s shoulder and received the littlest of begrudged pats on his side in return. Frank took the controller from their grip and sent them both downstairs with a final warning. They shuffled onto the landing, shoving, pushing.
On a tiny pink and purple television that his niece and nephew shared, veins an inch-thick tore out of the mercenaries’ arms. Frank sat down on an unmade bed and wedged a Liverpool F.C. pillow between his shoulder blades. He had been in the Hanging Prep section of the warehouse. He had never spent a full shift there in decades until today. Less work meant less variety. Though he knew to wait it out. When The Nip came along three hours into the shift to offer unpaid leave, every teenager and lazy sod took it. The less of them, the more work for him. This was his thinking regarding the viability of taking a new contract on reduced hours, but he knew it would not work out so simply, or in his favour to any great extent. For nine hours minus two unpaid breaks, he stood in place and tore the plastic coverings from clothes on hangers along metal rails. Once all coverings were removed and deposited into a recycling bin he would walk that rail twenty paces into lanes marked with store names corresponding to the tag on each rail. There were forty items to a rail and the rails never stopped coming. They were always just too tall to make the task comfortable, and it never became any less monotonous. It always required effort, even though it was the same with every rail. He must have sent three truck loads out on his own. He felt like a zombie or wished he felt as alive as one right about now. You were by the loading bay, so you didn’t sweat as profusely with the cool breeze, but as autumn leant sharply into winter, it just made you cold on top of sore.
The boys started up again on the landing and Salma launched into a lecture from the bottom of the stairs. The football trophies across Malcolm’s headboard and the lipsticks and eyeliners stood up on Joni’s beauty table jumped with every bang of Salma’s foot on the bottom steps.
On the T.V., the mercenary held a rifle as big as a motorbike under a message which read:
ARE YOU READY?
Frank’s options were FUCK YEAH and FUCK YOU. He opted for the former and was given no time to run before a court jester type figure clutched him in a chokehold. Its fingers like silver daggers. Frank had to sidestep his mercenary when prompted to avoid becoming ensnared in its grasp. When it did inevitably grab him, it elongated its back and lurched backwards like a python rearing to pounce. Its eyes were sewn shut, blinded to the bleakness of its surroundings. Before it could snatch the mercenary and drag him down to Hell, Frank paused. He knew what to do. How he knew he was not sure, but he laid the controller down on his nephew’s bed, flat and undisturbed as the game played on. His mercenary did not so much as flinch, and the beast lost interest before slinking back into its cave.
MONDAY
Frank pinched his nose between his pointer finger and thumb as discreetly as one could ever attempt such a move while standing in line. The game shop was a pit of dried sweat and stale breath, with a little residual weed smoke stuck to drooping hoodies and baggy jeans. Behind the till stood a nose ring with a sales assistant attached tapping furiously upon a keyboard.
‘Fifteen pounds in store credit or ten in cash,’ she told him.
‘I paid sixty,’ replied Frank. ‘Last week.’ He knew that cars lost their value the minute they were driven off the lot, but the game disc and its case were just days past brand new.
The girl shrugged her shoulders. Her earrings clinked like windchimes, there were so many you could hardly tell how the lobes underneath held them all.
‘Can’t you do a straight swap? My son duped me into buying this for his birthday but it’s not age-appropriate at all. There must be some other popular game kids his age can play.’
‘What age is he?’
‘Nine.’
‘There are no other games kids his age can play,’ the assistant told him. ‘You know, without getting bullied at school.’ She blew bubble-gum and Frank wanted desperately to stab it with his car keys.
‘My son has never shirked from a bully in his life,’ he told her. She did not react, not to his reply, not to the sirens wailing past down the high street, to nothing at all. If he ever saw that glazed expression in Noel’s eyes Frank would never forgive himself.
‘At least tell me,’ he sighed, and lifted the case to study its’ cover. Descriptive phrases were sparse and entirely gibberish, PULVERISE THE ENEMY, CONQUER THEIR LAIR. And the settings he had seen, of sandscapes and lava pools, painted a peculiar geography. ‘What is it? Hell? Mars? Why do demons and alien monsters coexist to kill only me?’
The assistant looked to the swelling queue behind him, and then back to Frank. ‘It’s just a game, man,’ is all she could offer.
Frank put the case back in the interior pocket of his tattered old windbreaker and stepped out of the game shop and into the lunchtime rush of the Thistles Centre, where Grandmothers pulled trolley bags and high school students pushed each other’s shoulders to send bags of chips flying across squeaking varnished floors. He had not slept, and heavy bags under his eyes told the story of many sleepless nights. He wanted a coffee but reminded himself that a single takeaway cup was more than the price of the packet in his pantry. He had time for a quick movie but knew there were a thousand films to sleep through at a few taps of his television’s remote. The only decision that was free to him was where to turn next, and he was pulled apart by either option. He could turn right to the parking garage and drive home to waste the day in front of the television before picking Noel up from school, or he could head left out of the mall, on a short walk to visit Mags at the Job Centre. The card from Salma was weightless in his trouser pocket but heavy on his mind.
‘Frank!’ a high-pitched voice screeched at him. ‘Ha, ha! Frank Odom, look at you.’ Suddenly, he was locked in the crushing embrace of Jim Hart, former colleague, never a friend. Frank had not forgotten his obnoxious, piercing chuckle.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Jim turned Frank around to face the game shop. ‘You saw the prices in there and walked right out too, ha!’ Frank forced a smile and nodded along. Jim had clamped his palm firmly on his shoulder. ‘My youngest, Kyle, you remember him?’ Frank had never met any of Jim’s children or even seen photographs. ‘He wants one of those virtual reality headsets for Christmas that beam the game right into your eye sockets!’ Jim dug his fingers deeper into Frank’s shoulder and chest and flailed his other fist like the fleeing arms of a puppet. ‘They said four hundred for the headset, plus another hundred for the games, twenty for the cables. Ha! And to think the wife fancies New York for Hogmanay on top of it all.’ Frank managed to slide his arm, and self, free. ‘Just this time of year, isn’t it? Ha!’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Frank, as if Jim needed the invitation.
‘Ha, ha! Too right,’ Jim guffawed. ‘What are you and Michaela up to this year?’
It had struck him as an insult at first, and as such he was pained, but deep-down Frank knew that it had simply slipped Jim’s mind. They had not seen each other for years, though Jim would have known of Michaela’s passing. It had surprised Frank at the time when he realised that the pain is not in telling others, rather it is in so many people coming to tell you that they heard, and that they were sorry, and they would do anything to help. How could they all accept it so soon? Why was the bubble of denial burst so suddenly, so repeatedly stabbed like daggers to the heart? Maybe it could be nice to stand and hold onto a moment in which the love of his life was once again spoken of in the present tense. Jim’s eyes were searching for a response. No realisation was coming, Frank could tell. If his options were to turn right and be miserable at home, left to discuss an uncertain future with Mags (even if it pleased his sister), or stand in place and recall ancient history with Jim, Frank preferred the ground to swallow him up and be disappeared from it all.
*
Frank squashed the cardboard to a flat layer inside the bin. Cats were screeching down the block. The moon shone earlier with each passing day. Tomorrow was right around the corner now. A chill ran through him. He stepped back inside and locked the door. His son’s foghorn snores assured Frank that he was not watching through gaps in the stairwell He adjusted the television’s volume to low single digits and crossed his legs on the floor between the coffee table and couch. He had not played videogames at Noel’s age, when they were simpler, blockier. He had never seen the appeal, until these past few days, where he saw the appeal in nothing else.
The final arena lay before him between rust and rubble and scorched sands. Fiery gates held back throngs of enemies raring to rush him all at once. There were platoons of Harryhausen skeleton warriors on the haunches of demon dogs with spiked tails, flaming storks carried parcels of agent orange, and brutes sharpened harpoon blades against their own titanium ribs.
ARE YOU READY?
Frank knew that he was not. He had four missed calls from Salma, with as many following texts, and an answering machine message from Mags at the Job Centre. He had decided not to visit or call Mags and wished never to do so. He willed, with every beat in his chest, that his ultimatum on whether to take the paltry redundancy package or to stay and agree to an uncertain contract of zero hours had been a bad dream as opposed to a waking nightmare. His encounter with Jim earlier in the day had reminded him of a staff night out, a month or so before his wife’s diagnosis. He had been ready to leave when the buffet trays were lifted and the karaoke screen was wheeled out, but Michaela insisted that they wait just a little bit longer. Frank could not understand why until Jim hijacked the microphone to try out his best Sinatra. He did it his way alright, but Michaela did it better the entire drive home. She hammed it up even further, missing every note even harder than Jim had before Noel on the stairs. Frank could hear Noel’s wheezing still. It took the bribe of a McDonald’s breakfast in the morning to get Noel into his bed that night, though it did not work for long. Soon he was back lingering on the top step. Frank had to lift him into bed. And when he stepped back downstairs, Michaela yearned to be similarly lifted up to their own bed. He shook his head, laughing, and embraced his wife on the couch. They woke up the next morning just after dawn, in each other’s arms and somehow on the floor, with Noel patiently waiting at their feet. Shoes on. Stomach rumbling.
In her portrait on the mantel, Michaela’s dimpled smile met the end of a rolled-up degree. Frank retorted to her with a frown. He resumed the game and, through the onward march of his nemeses, within thirty seconds the mercenaries’ head was upon a spike. On the loading screen before his revival a Nosferatu like figure taunted him wickedly. He was asked again:
ARE YOU READY?
Frank swapped his pistol for a bazooka and training knife for a samurai sword then set out again. In less than a minute, his large intestine was ripped through his belly button and used to cut off circulation to his left arm, which pinched off and was used as a stick with which to beat his soldier to death. He threw his hands in the air and asked why, and the onset of a migraine made his brow taut and skull crunch. Even on the loading screen the vampire taunted him, only it was not a taunt, it was a mumble, and it was not coming from the T.V.
He found Noel by his bed rather than in it. On his knees, lamp lit, and head bowed, small hands holding a framed photograph of he and his Mother on the tram in Blackpool. Matching sun hats, and smiles. He wasn’t saying anything, at least anything Frank could parse, but he was pleading to the picture in mumbles.
‘You should be in bed,’ Frank immediately regretted saying.
Noel twisted around, hid the photo behind his back.
‘You were playing my game,’ Noel replied. ‘You’ve been playing it a lot,’ deflecting.
‘You’ve obviously not been sleeping a lot,’ Frank said.
‘You’ve been stuck on the second last boss for two hours.’
‘That’s not even the last one?’
‘You aren’t using your double jump. You can crush the bugs by slamming down on to them and that weakens the vampire.’
Frank knew that he ought to lift Noel up and tuck him back in. But ought and will are not aways allied.
‘Show me,’ he said.
He wrapped the blanket from the arm of the couch over their backs. Noel took the controller.
‘I can show you, but you need to do all the button mashing bits.’
Frank let him play, interjected when instructed, and their man of action hopped the heads of demented insects and made mincemeat of waves of malicious military forces. Walls were hugged and bombs thrown every which way to clear the battlefield. Perhaps it was not age-appropriate, and it was certainly not educational, but Frank could not deny that this was a cathartic experience. Nothing slowed the mercenary down with Noel at the wheel. His battle axe glided through the enemy’s armour with swift justice. Snakes with their venom could spit, and hook-handed pirates could stab, but the mercenary took it all in his stride. Nosferatu was set back in its tomb. Noel was unstoppable. They both were.
The controller vibrated wildly as tectonic plates shifted and gave rise to the final boss, a two-headed Hydra of gargantuan bust and pincer claws. It was protected by an impenetrable layer of dragon skin and ducked behind a tall stone barrier. The beast spat lava and hot ash over mounted piles of the dead.
ARE YOU READY?
Noel lay the controller down on the floor and Frank expected that he was too tired to continue. ‘Mum would never have let me play this,’ he said.
‘Your Mum knew better than I on many things,’ Frank replied, and rubbed a hand across his son’s back. ‘On everything.’
‘Are you going to lose your job, tomorrow?’ Noel asked the floor before them both, he could not look at his Father.
Frank turned his chin around, ‘Who said anything about that?’
‘Malcolm,’ Noel replied. Frank held an appearance of calm but fizzed with fury underneath. ‘He heard Aunt Salma talking on the phone about it to a friend who could help.’
Frank pulled Noel in even closer, and their eyes met, his son was so young but carried the weight of grief and sadness in sagging eyelids and on those small, sharp shoulders. But he could still make his cheeks dimple, with a smile unlike any other. Just like his Mother. Just like that photograph on the mantel.
‘You don’t have to worry about a thing,’ said Frank, even if he could not be sure that he was being entirely truthful. His watch beeped for midnight and with the blanket he dammed tears which welled in his son’s eyes. On reflection of the glass over her portrait, his and Noel’s faces sat on each of his wife’s shoulders, both facing inward to her.
‘Do you know what you’ll do next?’ asked Noel. And Frank did not. He needed a moment. Hell, he needed far more than that. Neither option was right. Not for this moment or their future. He swithered on whether to just pick one right now even if he went the opposite way in his meeting with upper management tomorrow. Just to give his son some, if fleeting, reassurance. But he could not lie to him, not while she still appeared beside them.
Instead, he lifted the controller up from the coffee table and asked his son, ‘Are you ready?’
‘No turning back now,’ replied Noel. Frank watched on as his son lay waste to this hordes of enemies until the ultimate beast reared its ugly heads from behind the demolished stone barrier. The monster’s health bar sunk to a sliver than roared full again time after time. The mercenary lost his head, arms, legs, even once his full skeleton whilst the body remained intact. Videogames were where logic went to die, viscerally. Death screen after bloodier death screen and right back to the beginning. Noel’s head sunk, he tapped the controller against in his forehead lightly as if for inspiration. And found it.
‘Have you used any of your super unlocks?’ he asked feverishly.
Frank shook his head, if he had he had not done so consciously. Noel swam through menu’s until he let out a shriek and thrust his arms in the air.
‘You get super unlocks whenever you beat a boss to help you with the next one, how have you never used any of them? The game is so much harder without them.’
It was never easy to begin with, Frank thought. And he watched Noel confirm use of super unlock after super unlock. Each time the mercenary pulled a gold coin from the pouch on his hip and spun it high into the ashen air. THRASH SLASHER DEMON BLADE, SWORD OF THE RIVER STYX, PISTOL OF PULVERISING POWER and other such arcane and impossible weaponry were now in the mercenary’s possession once the coins landed.
It could have lasted minutes or hours, but when the beast was slain Frank had a keen sense of regret that it was over. Arms of the Hydra reached out but would never grasp its severed heads. Frank hugged and kissed his son. It was time for bed, for the both of them. His thumb hovered over the OFF button on the console as he watched the victorious mercenary fist-pump the air in the centre of the battlefield and the credits rolled. He carried Noel upstairs and dropped him at the top of the landing with a light pat on the back in the direction of the bathroom.
‘And brush those teeth this time,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll check in a moment.’ Noel waddled forward, and the tap gushed ferociously into the sink. Frank tore off his polo and replaced it with a sleep shirt, folded his jeans over the futon at the end of the bed. He was getting a rash under the face of his watch. There might be an ounce of moisturising cream in the bathroom cabinet if he could find the strength within him to squeeze it free. The sink was still gushing. He leant in to tell Noel to turn it down, but he had vanished. Frank twisted it off and turned on his heel. He found Noel on his knees once again with the photograph from the tram in his hands.
‘I asked him, and he doesn’t know,’ whispered Noel. Frank leant in out of sight. ‘I don’t know what he’ll do, but- I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
Noel held steady there for a moment with the photograph and ran his thumb over the swirling golden accents in the frame.
Frank stepped to the other side of the landing silently. The floorboards were landmines with their incessant creaks.
‘Teeth?’ he asked, letting the creaks announce his presence in the doorframe.
Noel flattened the frame face down on the floor behind him and flashed his Father with two rows of almost-pearly whites. As he tucked him, kissed his forehead again, he wanted to tell him something. But what exactly, he was not sure. That he spoke to Michaela too? That everything would all be alright? Perhaps Noel already knew, on both counts. With the duvet pulled up to his chin, Noel settled instantly into a deep sleep. Frank knew would not be quite as lucky.
TUESDAY
There is no living to be made in the reduction of hours in backbreaking physical labour. That Frank and Scott and Headphones might have to work twice the hours of salaried pen pushers for half of the comfort in their lives was titillation amongst the likes of The Nip and his managerial litter. They would never admit this, but Frank knew. For not having a degree in further education nor an adequately diversified C.V., Frank and the men he had worked alongside, for days or decades, would always be lesser in the eyes of the shy receptionists, the obese site manager, and the two executives on the other side of the door.
Frank sat with one knee bent over the other in a plastic chair in the corridor. Scott paced, and Headphones stood across from them and smiled without return to a security guard who could pass no other way. Scott replayed an anecdote about his friend from a local building site and the unsanitary placement of a length of PVC piping. He hoped that his induction could take place after a long weekend of snorting and swallowing his redundancy payoff. Headphones said that he would take whatever offer was on the table, he was going to be a Dad. Only found out this morning. Via text.
One man, whom Frank had parked beside for years without ever learning his name, let the meeting room door close gently behind him before turning to Frank, ‘You can go in, now.’
‘Are you ready?’ asked Scott. Headphones looked on expectantly, too.
Frank nodded and the door swung slowly to a close at his back. The two executives, one plump and one skinny woman, offered him a half-hearted welcome which he returned enthusiastically. Their eyes were tired and bored and seemed to hold no great expectation either way on his decision. He took a seat before them. His mind was not yet made up, and when the preamble was over, and Frank was finally asked the question he had been dodging for so long, he reached into his pocket.
‘Pick a side,’ he asked, holding out a pound coin before them.
The two executives wore masks of bafflement over their tired faces. Frank spun the coin into the air. He hurried them. Heads said one (stay), Tails the other (go). When the coin landed back in his closed palm, Frank smiled. Because whatever was on the other side of his clenched fingers, he would let Noel tell his Mum first.
