Watchful Eyes

Flash fiction http://1000words.org.uk/watchful-eyes/

Most days start off like this. Lurking round the bookies waiting for opening, then it’s cap on floor, Chels’ll throw me a quid while she’s rolling the shutters, two on last Friday of the month, just to get me started. No one want’s to be the first to dig deep. That I’ve learnt. And you be damned if it isn’t the poorest folk who give the most. Tried and tested, that is. No setting up camp outside the Hilton anytime soon. Worse outside bars, women strutting in with them red-soled shoes bought in sexual favours by the suit clutching her arm, just pleased to be seen with anything with a pair of tits and looser morals after a strawberry daiquiri. She’ll ditch him soon and move up the food chain. But he’s a month behind on his mortgage payment after them shoes. He hasn’t got a quid. He doesn’t give a s**t.

    

No, I’ve got it sussed. Prime location’s where kids can throw you their lunch money coppers to look all charitable and humanitarian in front of their friends. Where mums on the run rummage in hemp bags for change and explain to wide-eyed toddlers that “we always have to help the needy, pumpkin”, then offer you a half-empty smoothie and an avocado with apologetic smiles. A greasy boy on his f*g break gets rid of excess jingle-jangle so posh birds will only see crisp twenties when he buys them a drink. You can tell a prime location by it’s proximity to an Iceland, or maybe a Greggs, and usually there’ll be fat lasses in leggings so tight you can see the cellulite shaking as they walk by. It all depends on the conditions. Environmental factors, if you will. Location. Weather. Alcohol consumption. A precise scientific balance, and I know the formula.

    

Mostly I’m done by five. I catch the 17.09 to Highbridge Street. Always a window seat. Never the very back. People stare, sure. I haven’t got a can of Special Brew in a brown paper bag. I’m better than that. So not the very back. Not yet. Three teenagers sit on two seats opposite to avoid sitting next to me, people are cautious, it’s normal. A flustered lump of a woman dumps herself down next to me, wrestling shopping bags to the floor, her top riding up as she self-consciously tries to squeeze it over her protesting bulges. She smells like awkwardness and chocolate wrappers hidden from her husband. I smell like a dog rolling in a puddle and damp towels that’ve been left on the floor. I rest my forehead on the windowpane, its moist from condensation and it trickles to my eyebrow. I can see the bird-crap stain on my left sleeve and I know other people can see it too. I don’t care. Let them see.

   

The bulk of people get off at city centre. Their loss. The lump gets up, staring at the floor. Her jeans are too small. They were too small when her husband bought them four years ago. She wore them to please him. The thread has given up the fight near her right knee, the fabrics all puckered and dejected. She has to hold on the bar tight as the bus swerves, she’s like one of them pins on a bowling alley ready to topple. I can see the wedding band distorting as her knuckle clenches the rail, her fingers all pink and white and pink and white like lard riddled marble. So quiet now they’ve gone. This is my favourite part, not many stops now. Newgate, Byker, Lemington. I would time it if I had a watch. But I do that thingy like a nursery kid, one potato, two potato, three potato four. Muttering louder than needs be so no one sits by me during the best part.

    

I’m craning my neck now, want the first glance of it, ride the corner letting the bus throw my weight towards the window. There it is, my beauty, my secret. The entire city laid out beneath me. I’m on the precipice of a mountain and the lights are twinkling for me, only me, they know I’m watching. My fingers shake, my ears pop from the sheer ecstasy of it all. The engine shudders to a halt, terminations here already. My own little galaxy, concentrated so hard on those little stars route its like one of them time lapse photo’s that makes your eyes go all tricksy.

 

Reviews

[KurKota]

I really like this writing. You are very good with details. The details of the characters that are important to the story, and the scene. I really think you writing skills are fantastic. You paint beautiful mental pictures with your words, both small pictures within the character descriptions and the larger picture of the skyline scene. Beautiful writing. I look forward to writing other of your work

[Rebecca Conway]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the details :)

[Nick.B]

Interesting perspective towards life that has it's ups and downs (well....mostly downs than ups but still...) great job, love the story

[Rebecca Conway]

thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[Claire Twinn]

A wonderful description of a life that looks sad to us but still has flashes of beauty.

[Rebecca Conway]

thankyou :)