‘Headful’ by Chris Newlove Horton

I’d moved into the Palace because there wasn’t anywhere else I could go and I couldn’t bear to be alone a moment longer: I would’ve died. The Palace was the best thing that ever happened to me, and it would’ve stayed good, honestly the best, but one night someone went and set Gary on fire.

I should tell you: Gary was a girl. She was part of a younger group at the Palace who I didn’t know so well or like. I never knew her real name. I don’t know how we started using Gary, but we did.

Gary was fucked up, but not too fucked up. She ran around before rolling on the floor, flames all up the front of her dress. Her face was shiny, wet on one side. Half her hair was dark and stuck to her head. She could still talk and didn’t stop saying how much it hurt. Then she sort of passed out. Her friends took her in this wheelchair we had to the phone box down the street. She cried at the cracks in the pavements, the curbs, until we couldn’t hear her anymore.

Everyone said it was Adam who did it.

Gary and Adam were kind of together and always fighting, threatening to kill one another like couples do. That night they’d had a row and apparently Adam had poured a half-bottle of ethyl on her and lit it, while she slept. I didn’t know what or who to believe, but I knew Adam, and I knew he must’ve had a good reason to do it, if he did do it, even if it wasn’t what I’d’ve done.

I looked for Adam but couldn’t see him. He wasn’t in his room or in mine, and he wasn’t in the kitchen or the back or out under the forecourt.

I went back inside.

There was a sort of sweet smell, like cooked sugar, left behind. A few of us sat around the stereo, not saying much. Someone lit a joint, and we smoked, listened to music, moved on. Blue lights flashed past at some point, but that happened every night.

I must’ve napped because I seemed to wake up and when I opened my eyes it was still night and I was still alive and everyone else had gone to their rooms; except two of Gary’s group were in front of me, staring.

‘What’s up?’ I said.

One of them said something about leaving.

They were a guy and a tiny girl with green hair. The guy had a nose stud and the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a man. It was him who’d been talking.

‘I’m not stopping you,’ I said. ‘Go for it. Be my guest.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We want you to leave.’

‘Where’s Adam?’ said the tiny girl.

I turned to her. ‘How the fuck would I know?’

‘You’ve both got to leave,’ the guy said. ‘We’ve talked it through with the others. Everyone agrees.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said, pretending to not listen or care. I was going through all my pockets, searching for something — Rizlas, most likely; I was always looking for Rizlas. I hoped acting like they weren’t there would make them go away.

I guess they were worried that Adam might one day do the same to them. Or that I might: and maybe they were right, because in that instant I wanted to pick the silver stud from the guy’s nose and push it through his throat.

But what could I say?

I liked the Palace, the way of life, the drugs. ‘Palace Petrol’ on Shooter’s Hill. The roof leaked, the windows were broken or covered by board, and in the winter it was stony dead cold. But I’d built my little room with my own hands. And now, what? That was it?

Little and Lashes had not gone away. I’d run out of pockets to rummage through, so just smiled at them both. ‘You know she’ll be fine,’ I said.

The girl started shaking.

The guy said, ‘She’s dead.’

*

Years before all that, I was sixteen and so skint that I would steal food from supermarkets and attempt to sell it on. I went around knocking on doors, asking in shops, seeing if anyone would take the stuff that I’d stole. The Palace were always good, paying what they could or willing to swap me for drugs, mainly mushrooms and speed. I started going regularly to pick up, or to the parties they’d have running on for days. That’s how I ended up living there: I went to a party one night and then I never left.

Adam had been there for a few years already. He was somewhere near forty, which I couldn’t comprehend. I’d never met anyone that old who was still living as we were. Everyone left eventually, into a job or the hospital, or prison; some just disappeared. Adam was like living proof that it didn’t have to be that way.

He looked out for me, showed me how to cope with other people and how the world really worked. But he wasn’t as political as the others. He hated the system and society just as much as anyone else, but rather than make him angry, it all seemed to sadden him. He told me that most people were victims and the worst part was they didn’t know.

Like me, he loved getting high. I’d started plugging speed and Adam became a mentor, of sorts, showing me the correct method and amounts so I didn’t waste it or OD, and soon I could carry a good buzz for days.

Adam made money selling pills at the parties. People came from all over London, from Essex, and Kent, Brighton, even Wales. He had a guy in Leeds who he bought bulk off, so every few weeks he’d travel up there to restock. Usually he went on his own, but one time, for a reason he didn’t share, Adam wanted me to come.

We took the bus, overnight from Victoria. The journey was fine, except the toilet door didn’t shut. It swang around and made a racket, and wherever you sat on the bus it smelt like your head was in a drain.

We got in around 5:30. It was dark and it was raining. Adam bought me a McDonald’s breakfast and a strawberry milkshake, and at a corner table we keyed bumps of Ket and speed. I thought people were looking at us, but probably they weren’t. The decor started getting on my nerves. Then the red plastic chairs started to hum.

We walked around doing nothing. Adam talked a lot about specific buildings and streets, about what had replaced what, where certain places used to be, places he’d known and were now simply gone. I’d not been to Leeds before and remember thinking how it looked like something dragged out of a canal, something lost and dredged up years later, waterlogged, ruined.

The shops opened, the city tried to straighten itself out. But I felt so caked in icing sugar I might as well’ve been walking on the Moon.

We started up a long hill and Adam pointed out the university where he’d once been enrolled and even attended for a day. At the top of the hill was a big park and we stopped on a bench for a while, watched the grass fidget.

‘My mum lives near here,’ Adam said.

‘Yeah?’ I said, surprised.

‘Yeah, ‘bout five minutes over there,’ he said, and he stuck a finger to one side.

There was only more grass, trees, a bandstand, so I guessed he meant further behind.

‘Should we go see her?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, and he seemed to be annoyed.

Meeting the guy was easy and over in no time. We drove around in his massive car, Adam and him talking about the weather and what else? About families and the guy’s kid, his son, I think, who was ill and in hospital or had been. They seemed to know each other well and were generally catching up, while I listened to a song on the radio that seemed longer than a normal song. Then the guy handed us these blue plastic bags with more little bags inside, and inside the little bags were the lime green and white pills. He dropped us off by the bandstand and we stood under its roof to be out of the rain.

‘What radio station was that?’ I asked.

But Adam didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me. He shoved the bags in the side pockets of his parka and rolled himself a cigarette. I did the same.

We smoked and it rained, and then he rolled another, and all I wanted was for him to talk to me, to say we’d done all right.

That was the first time I’d ever felt scared in his presence. I’m not sure if I was scared of Adam exactly, but something in him had changed and it wasn’t a good change. He seemed closed off, lost to himself; the world couldn’t get through.

Finally he said, ‘What were you saying?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘No, man. You were saying something. About the radio?’

‘I just wondered what that station was. In the car? I’ve never heard the radio play the same song for so long without talking. It was cool.’

Adam smiled. ‘You should take it easy,’ he said, walking off.

We went in the first pub we found and took two of the pills each. One lime green, one white, both washed down with a cider and black. And I don’t know how long we stayed there, but then we went on somewhere else. Parts come back to me, the little silver girl, an old man whose soaked leather shoes looked made of molten lead, the dog with a face so sad it was funny or so funny it was sad, the pub toilet door with RUN FROM FEAR scrawled on the back, another with SMOKE CRACK NOT IRAQ carved into a wall, the woman in a white dress, on her hands and knees, holding a pointy boot by the heel and hitting it on the floor, and the guy in full fatigues, drinking something pink, who said he was a para, said he was SAS, who said he could kill us with his bare hands and that he would kill us with his bare hands if we didn’t give him a bit of what it was we were on, and Adam was dancing, then we both were, the two of us were dancing, together.

It rained harder somehow. Rain sloshed over the pavements, bubbled up out of drains. Adam and me ran from one bit of cover to the next, laughing. We were wet through. And we were happy, which isn’t true enough.

Because it was cheaper, we were also on the overnight return. The bus was full. The passengers looked tired, sickly, like ghosts. We headed to the back, staying close. Leeds, its lights, streets, shapes, bled off then disappeared.

But I wasn’t doing so well. My head was split and repeated like a Russian doll, each section dancing to a different song from the other. And I was so hot; I was boiled; there wasn’t any air.

I said to Adam, ‘I have to get off.’

‘We can’t.’

‘Please,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘All right,’ Adam said. ‘You’re all right. Stay here.’

He disappeared in the direction of the driver, but he was gone for so long I thought he’d left me or found someone else to sit beside or that maybe I was on an entirely different bus, going who knew where, alone.

But then I heard Adam’s voice. He was saying, ‘Hey, man. Are you coming or what?’ He had hold of my arm. ‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s go.’

I grabbed my coat with the pills in the pockets and shuffled along toward the door. I was thanking the other passengers as I passed them. ‘Thank you,’ I was saying. ‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’

Then we were outside, me and Adam, in the half-dark of nowhere, as far as I could tell. The bus groaned, sank off into oceanic night. It came to me then that I was going to die very soon. This, I felt with increasing certainty, this was exactly the way people like me died. This was exactly the place where people like me died. I would die right there on the roadside. The night knew my name.

Heading into darkness, I was following Adam or I was searching for him; and he was talking to me from inside my own head. He was trying to tell me something, to guide me, I think, but I didn’t understand. Beneath me, I couldn’t see the ground. I bent over to touch it and my arm went through like I did not exist. I would be left like this forever, only ever half here. And the rain wouldn’t stop: down it came to wash yet more of me away ...

These were my thoughts and there were more, but the next thing I know is the woman in the turquoise silk shirt. Her hair was white and cut in a big circle, framing her face, which was also round, as were her eyes, amplified by thick glasses, and her smile, bright and wide as half a plate. She was made up of circles. And she was saying:

‘Boys, boys, it’s not that complicated. If there’s two of you then you need a room for two. So you want a twin room or a double?’

‘The cheapest,’ Adam said.

‘Okay,’ the woman said. ‘That’s a double, for the two of you, for one night.’ In a cramped, mirrored lift, Adam and I went on forever in the glass, or until the narrow corridor with rude mustard walls and creamy flowers on the carpet. Then the room was small and purple, and I had some real sickness. Adam laid me on the bed. Then he fiddled with something and a large plastic unit on the wall shuddered into life. It huffed cold air through the room and smelt of burnt hair. I looked at the purple ceiling, the purple walls, the purple curtains, the purple covers on the bed, unsure if the room was truly so purple or if it was my broken brain just having me on.

The room cooled, and I slept, waking up, I think, several times in the night. Adam had got in next to me, beside me in the bed. His hands moved over my body, under my clothes. Later, he stroked my head. ‘You’re okay,’ he kept on saying, ‘I’m here. I’m still here,’ and I slept on in his arms, feeling safe, almost loved.

But part of me isn’t sure it happened that way at all. It might’ve been a dream: a dream where Adam just holds me and speaks softly in my ear. And a dream where I let him hold me, where I let him do that to me. Because it must be me who let him do it. Because if I’m the dreamer, then it’s my dream.

The next morning was overcast and harsh. I waited in the car park listening to the motorway nag. It was close by, behind a grassy embankment and a thin row of trees. And behind it all, somewhere, was London.

The car park was empty. Adam came out, smiling. ‘Here,’ he said, handing me a big roll-up. ‘This’ll level you out.’

‘Where are we?’ I said. ‘Luton,’ Adam said.

It smoked rough but sweet. It made me cough. ‘Do we get another bus?’ I managed to say.

‘Another bus, a train, or whatever,’ Adam said. ‘We could walk it, we could. Or we could hitch, man. Imagine that. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does. You and me can do what we like.’

Did that include setting someone on fire? I’d’ve asked him then and there, if I could — if I’d known. But it was different then, so was he, so was I, and maybe I heard what I wanted to hear.

Gary didn’t die. It was a rumour, or a lie to get me and Adam out. Not that I ever saw Adam again. I never saw any of them from the Palace after that night. Except for Gary, who I saw in a pub in New Cross. I was at the end of the bar, contemplating my pint. I couldn’t say how many years’d gone by. The glass was cold and foggy, and a foggy glass can remind you of things. I heard her laugh, Gary’s laugh, just as shrill and cutting as before. She was at a table of four or five, far away, but I saw them all and could see her the most. She held a hand to the side of her face, kept messing with the same few strands of black hair. Her hair looked brittle, too black to be real. The skin on her cheek was waxy and pink. A flap of eyelid dripped over half her eye. She lifted her face in the direction of the bar. I wiped the glass with my thumb so that it made a squeaking sound. I could wipe it away, but it always came back.

From issue #8: spring/summer 2019

About the Author
Chris Newlove Horton’s stories have been shortlisted for the Dazed & Confused ‘Surveillance Stories’ competition, twice for The White Review Short Story Prize, and have been published in Lighthouse Journal, The Stinging Fly and The Moth.