Mark Ward
Comments (0) Peeking my head through the curtains like a comedy star, I see an accident on the street below me. I was never happy living in the city centre with its Saturdays full of “FUCK YOUSE, I’VE EARNED A DRINK”. They sing songs about sport and the girls laugh and they eventually walk on, having conquered my wall with their bladders and my front door with their errant cum. Drink and youth makes everything seem new. He looks like he’s mid-stroke across an ocean, and without warning, the tide has calmed and in the midday sun, he submits to the powerlessness of floating.
Lost in their mecca, the McDonalds, I sit around the screaming children who eye me suspiciously. I am effete, and they know it. I am tattooed, and their eyes flick from these sigils to my piercings, to my hairdo, my look. It’s designed to be different; singular, but right now I wish I could pass. I wish I could hide behind those screaming children instead of being engulfed by them. There is something beautiful in the honesty of a child’s taunt. Maybe it’s because they assume that each mark has broken your heart. There is an older man across the road – his arm extended, his hand grasping the air. He is slumped against my neighbour’s front door, the empty road between him and his victim.
The speakers on my stereo are so advanced that they can make the floorboards shake if I so desire. If I was brave enough to turn it up full volume, I think the nails in my floor would begin to unscrew themselves and that the wood would buckle and warp. I imagine noise ordinance officers banging down my door, police and the ensuing hullabaloo. A couple of notches from the maximum, the music drowns out the city but not all of it. When I hear the scream, I mute the stereo from across the room, and I’m briefly lost in the wonder of technology: orchestras at the touch of a button, rock bands in your living room, all of which can vanish with the press of a remote. People take all of these things for granted.
He is alone, suffocating in the shock, in the deepening horror of what he has done. There is no way he can move; he can’t ring the police, he can’t do CPR; all of that training falls out of your head anyway – with only the pretend version from hospital dramas remaining. The cyclist is dying, I can see that now. The driver sees me and starts to shout for help, moving his head in such a way so that I can hear him, but that the scream doesn’t cross his victim’s path – that would seem impolite. He screams for help. The bicycle looks like it’s been folded down for storage. The metal is scratched. I disconnect the phone, shut the window and turn up the stereo to full. The police arrive soon after.
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Mark Ward is a playwright and musician. He is currently working on his second play, Perfect Paragraphs, and writes a blog for gcn.ie called Brief Lives. He makes music under the name Where is This.
