OOM: 20th Century Boy, Pt. III

[the_gene_genie]

 

He wonders if he’s missed his train. Probably. Almost definitely. He doesn’t know what time it is. It’s dark though, and raining a bit. His expensive suit seems to be collecting moisture and dragging him down. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine himself being pulled into the earth, sucked into the foundations of this place that isn’t his. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. No one would know he was there. They’d walk over him, oblivious, just like he’d walked over the grave of the pit. No one would miss him, because he’s not supposed to be here.

The whiskey started hurting his throat an hour ago, but he keeps drinking it. He’d ran out of fags and found a newsagent. Nearly got in a fight when they tried to charge him seven quid for another pack. Do they think he’s stupid? Seven quid? He’d hauled the bloke over the counter and lost his balance. They’d both ended up on the floor and his head hurts now, but he’d picked the packet up before he ran out the door. What’re they going to do, get his dabs? He doesn’t exist here. No harm, no foul. Or something.

He’s sitting on a wall, and he’s on the centre spot, in the centre circle, slap-bang in the middle of the pitch at Maine Road. If he looks to his left, he can see where he stood on the terraces, screaming his lungs out with the rest of the Kippax Stand. Francis Lee and Colin Bell dance and dribble in front of his eyes, scoring their goals, aiming City towards glory.

Only it’s a housing estate now. He’s sitting on some young executive’s front wall. He used to look down on this very spot when he were a lad, and dream of leading his team to unheard-of heights. Didn’t matter that he was shit at football. It was all about the dream, and now look. Someone built a housing estate on it.

 He wonders if they’d call the police if he fell asleep here. Maybe it’d be worth it, to see the stars from here. He could imagine he was home, and the smell of lawns was the Maine Road turf. That’d be nice.

They’d take him to the station. It’d be different.

 

He gets up, and walks on.

~ ~ ~

 

What time is it?

(2011)

 

 

Was it inevitable he’d end up here?

(Yes)

 

Was it too much to hope, that of all the things he wishes could have been demolished, this house would still be standing?

(Of course)

 

It looks no different. It’s exactly where he left it. He reckons he could walk up to the door and knock, and his mother would answer. There’d be a crash of broken glass from somewhere in the back, and she’d tell him to run up to his room before his dad saw him. And there’d be shouting, and he and Stu would pretend to sleep and never talk about how scared they were, hearing those footsteps on the stairs.

He bets they still creak the same way. He bets he’s in there now, the old bastard. He can close his eyes and smell the factory down the road, and hear the kids playing knock-and-go-run a few doors up (they never tried it on Albert Hunt’s door). He can see himself walking down this street in his uniform his first day of work, proud as punch; he can hear his mother crying the day Stu ran off and never came back; he can hear the silence when his dad died, and they were too relieved to pretend to be sad.

A whole life, behind that door. A whole miserable, stinking life that doesn’t have the decency to disappear. Maine Road’s gone, the pits are gone, he got lost in his own town. But this place’ll never go.

He’s been dying for a piss since the housing estate. But he wouldn’t sully hallowed ground, never mind that there were some poncey-arsed cars just begging to be watered. Here, though, he has no such respect.

It’s a small gesture, but it’s all he’s got left. And he thinks to himself, watching the spray on the door, that it’s as pointless, and empty, and stupid as coming here at all was. The only comforting thought he has, as he turns away, is that he will be long, long, long dead before his city turns into this place. This horrific, alien, awful place, that has buried his life underneath it and moved on, like none of it was ever here at all.