Coffee and Sugar by C. Sean McGee (ready player one ebook .txt) 📕

“Joao,” she said, “Can I stay here tonight?”

When Joao awoke in the morning, Charity had already gone. There was a note on the table but Joao was illiterate so he merrily tucked the note into the pocket of his pants that lay neatly on the floor and quietly snuck into the shower, so as not to disturb The Bishop.

He head felt light but his heart felt heavy. He was so tired and hung-over, having given so much of himself in every cup of coffee that he had made and living so much difficulty in such small containable doses.

As he stood catatonic, one hand holding the neck of the shower upright so that it didn’t fall forward against the wall and the other, slapping away at the broken tiles of the bathroom with a broken squidgy, haplessly trying to evade the water from flowing past the drain where he pattered about and past the filthy sink and rocking toilet and out into the small kitchen and church floor.

And; as the cold water streamed over his face, shivering his body into shaking away the severity of the sadness and asperity that caught in his pores as if his soul were the muddy carpet that collected the pit and filth of traveller’s shoes, he cried and even under a cold stream, he could taste the salt on his lips and strangely, it made him thirsty for more.

“I wonder if the sun ever feels this tired.”

As he left for work, he tidied up around the church so that The Bishop wouldn’t be mad. His temper was immeasurable and it was much easier to find ways to avoid it than to have to reason with it. He straightened some chairs that were strewn about, collected some papers that were on the floor, cleaned The Bishop’s vomit which was next to the papers strewn about on the floor and set aside on one of the chairs, a pair of women’s panties that were pink with some frilly lace running around the top.

As he walked out the door, he thought about the things Charity had told him and what they had talked about all night and basically he just tried to remember anything she had said so he could hear the sound of her voice so he could feel as happy and belonging as he did last night, sitting on his bed, holding her hand, listening to her talk about life, telling her everything about his and laughing at things that weren’t really funny but were just fun to laugh at and listening to her breath get heavier as she drifted into sleep with her ear press against his lap and her sleeping eyes watching the door with Joao; leaning against the wall, falling asleep after some time, running his fingers through her long black hair; undoing the piles of dried, frizzed and tangled knots at the ends.

When he left the church, he closed the iron gate that boarded off the entrance, wrapped the two chains back around through the bars like an old rusted snake and bolted their heads to their bums so that nobody could tear them apart.

And with the house secure, he headed off but as he did a slight clicking sound; like the turning of a lock or the loading of a gun, caught his attention and it pulled his sight to one of the old shacks at the top of the hill. He couldn’t explain it but he for one reason or another that was not his to debate, he turned back and climbed to the top of the hill and stepped up onto the wooden planks that ran across a small open sewer; the wood wobbling and creaking beneath his feet, daring him to take another step and fall into the sordid mess below.

He stood at the door with his hand raised mere inches from a long chain that hanged from a bar, welded across the frame and he stood still in capitulated, mute maladroitness; like he did before, wanting; but unable, to speak, to knock, to say his name or to ask who’s there, on the other side of that door.

He could hear someone there; on the other side of that door, standing probably as he was standing and listening, probably as he was listening. Maybe they were kind and needed a friend or maybe they were just mean and selfish like everyone else; smiling and showing their teeth benignantly before gnawing off your giving hand and spitting it out again because they had probably just confused their repugnant hunger with their casual boredom.

They could only be one or the other; mean or kind, and though he felt saddled with fear; the type that makes you run until your legs fall right off, there was a part of him that could see almost through the fog that pressed him to flee and he felt that maybe he could see some kindness, not a great deal, just a bit.

But even a bit might always be just enough; that the person behind that door could be one or the other but if he were to say his name or rattle at the chain, maybe the person would be kind and maybe he could make another friend, someone close to home; like he’d never really had.

His heart beat fast, his breath quickened and he felt as if he were losing his lungs to the aspect of drowning in a raging open sea for every time he opened his mouth, a short, sharp, desperate breath raced over his gritting teeth and stung the small sores on the side of his tongue which was pressed down upon rows of jagged teeth as its tip pushed down at the point where his teeth met his swollen, red gums, pressed with the force of a supporting beam as he maintained the construction of his silence, willing no sound upon his body, not even the taking of a breath or the licking of his tongue, as he swallowed a single drop of saliva.

On the ground, next to a large stone that was beside the door to the shack, was what looked like a small pencil or pen. Joao leaned down slowly, trying not to make any rash sound, but as he clasped at the pencil, the large stone slipped on a bed of small pebbles and loose gravel and a chorus of scrunching and scratching echoed in his ears and it sounded probably louder than it actually was but what played out in his mind had him ardently freeze, staring at the crack between the door and the planks of warped wood which acted like an unsteady bridge, jetty or wharf over a river of filth, waste and excretion, thinking to himself that each breath that he took sounded was like a clap of thunder and so he tried holding onto each breath but it didn’t work because eventually he had to let go and every next breath was louder, deeper, more desperate and more addling than the one before.

Panic set in.

But he didn’t run.

He reached into his pocket, crouching by the overturned rock and scribbled something on a piece of paper that was scrunched inside. He took the paper and pressed it gently to iron out the uneven edges that folded like the pages of an old text book and when it was flat enough to slip through the crack in the door, he pushed it through.

He pinched the thin paper with both hands, his thumbs and fingers delicately pressing the far tip of the paper into the dark and holding it for a moment while he thought if this was the right thing to do or not and when he had decided that it wasn’t, person behind the door snatched the paper from his gentle pinch.

Panic set in.

And he ran.

He made no bargain of silence with his stamping feet, only one of distance and he powered through every step, unabridged from stealth or secrecy.

He ran straight past the church with its heavy rusted gate chained and bolted shut and down along the rows of brothels emptying of clients and whores like an old washer spitting out the dregs of water from its last cycle and then he ran still, on past the scores of closing bars where old women with neat wash cloths tied over their curled, purple hair stood with damp, bending cigarettes clinging to their yellow teeth while they hosed off the tables, chairs and floors, completely separated from the truth of their labour, staring idly into the distance, imagining something they had been watching hours before on television, when it was that the crux of this lecherousness had been consumed and then exhumed and then dried and crusted like an old scab onto the floor.

He pushed through the swarms of people stumbling down the hill towards their dawning sobriety. Most of them split their direction and spilled to the side, falling heavy on one leg, hopping and cartwheeling their way back onto two feet and shaking their fists in slurred combatant banter but with all the threat of a polite address.

Her ran and ran and ran until his bounds were so high that he was no longer running for he was leaping his way down past the scourge of the city, almost splitting his chin as his rampant rising knees sprang up like a tragedy on an otherwise bad day, catching him content and unaware, hitting him hard and leaving its inevitable bruise that would leave long after his explanation failed to suffice.

At the bottom of the hill he leaned over himself and caught his breath, gripping his hands to his hips and squeezing his stomach to drone the pain that was like an electric belt across his stomach and that coursed up his body and into his lungs.

He stood hunched over in the middle of a busy sidewalk where people rushed from one side to another, heavyset in their obligation, all seemingly pressed for time and comfort, pushing past each other and nervously stepping on one another’s toes.

Nobody ever looked at the hill as they passed. They all knew it was there but they furthered to pretend it did not exist, like a friend with a crippling dependency; everyone just turned the other cheek, ignoring; in the wake of their own flight and flux, the flow of people coming down off the hill to join them in their disheartened mirth as; in the drudgery of their banal existences, they all wished away yet another day, haggling with god or the universe or secular chance for any another day to be today, bettering themselves instead to go unfed and caring only to lick at the sugared spoon.

They didn’t look to their right as their paths were swept up as one with scores of men and women spilling from the mouth into the open river of see nothing, say nothing; where eyes were just a dressing, like a coloured ring on an eagle’s wing for they looked only in their beleaguered minds thinking of places they would rather be and not noticing how the people that spilled down from the hill had changed the complexity in their eyes and that in an instant they went from perverse defiler, to red handed reproof to finally; like a soldier’s feet falling into march, to the ubiquitous blank and obnubliated, cast iron stare of a decent, abiding citizen.

They didn’t see the faces of the feet that quickly found their march, moving in learned, uniformed succession. They dared not to look, should they accidentally spy on someone they trust, on someone they know or on someone they love or, by looking up and catching in a shop window, themselves, in their won reflection. For the flux of degeneracy that poured from the open sewer into the river of obligated congeniality and decency was made of everyday people; brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, lovers, friends and every profession you would curse yourself to imagine.

Joao saw them all though, every one of them.

He saw how the rapists, junkies, drunks and vile torturous pigs so easily put on