Mike
By: Sean Cumming
Tags: Short Story, Short Fiction, Double, Fiction Writing, Fiction

Photograph by Etienne Girardet

I woke up. The world hurt. My head throbbed. The room pulsed. I started coughing and then retching. My tinnitus was going crazy. A whole town of bell towers in there. Oh, Christ it was bad. Then there was the stiffness, the pain in my arms. I realized one of my legs was stuck to the sheets. I peeled it off. Caked in dried blood and a big welt on my thigh where the rubber bullet hit. My eyes were on fire like someone had been rubbing pollen into them while I was asleep. I reached for the bedside cabinet and grabbed the water bottle. It was empty. More coughing and retching. I caught my breath. My lungs felt like I had smoked a 20 pack. It was an effort getting up. The room spun and I had to steady myself on the edge of the bed. The world seemed to close into that moment. I was concentrating so hard on just getting up and getting to the kitchen for water. I wanted to cough. I could feel it rising in the back of my throat trying to escape. I swallowed hard, closed the door, pushed the prisoner back into the dark. He was still in there though rattling the bars. I fumbled to the door still in my underwear. No light please. The corridor was dark. The pain moved from behind my eyes, down my neck, up into my skull, then shooting down my arms, my back, into my lungs and up out the mouth.

The morning after the night before. I wish I had got high or blasted. At least then I could blame myself. I felt the cold sting my skin as I fumbled to the kitchen. A window was open and the faint smell of frost on grass wafted in, mingling with the usual burnt oil and vegetables of the communal kitchen. I got to the sink and plunged my face into the cold water stream. For a moment bliss, numb bliss. The angry convict in my chest was subdued. I could breath. I could see. My eyes still hurt, my head still rattled, and the pain in my leg was excruciating, but I could see. I hadn’t even thought about Stef. I didn’t notice if she was even next to me on the bed. For some reason my first thought was Mae. Mae, an old girlfriend. Kind of conservative. I knew her back East. Wait was it East or was it here? Mae her freckled shoulder. It jumped in there, escaped from somewhere, saying “hey I know you just got the shit beat out of you but here is someone you had sex with once or twice”. I shook my head, half to remove the image and half to get the water off.

I needed an aspirin and a joint. I coughed again, said out loud “ow fuck it!’, “playing ow fuck it by $orSerer, sure” said the speaker. A glitch core beat started, and my head did not like it. “please shut the fuck up!” I screamed and slammed my hand down hard on the speaker. These things are indestructible though and it just kept going. “please upgrade to premium to pause or select a track. You are now listening to ow fuck it by $or$erer. “Turn volume down to 1 then..fuck!” “turning down to..”, at that moment Stef came onto the kitchen.

“Fuck you look like shit”, she said. She was dressed in her civvies clothes. I forgot she had a shift at the fulfillment office at 8.

“Here take this” she handed me a bottle of Ibuprofen.

“Anything stronger?” I asked. Stef laughed and leaned in for a kiss.

“At 8 in the morning…fuck what did they do to you?” She had just noticed the welt where the rubber bullet hit. The color drained from her face. She wasn’t there last night…right…work at 8.

“Oh, fuck this isn’t the first time Stef”.

“I know but jeesus Mike if we had the money I would take you to Flash care and get them to at least have a look at that. I looks worse than the airport action one I got. Are they testing out new stuff or what?”.

I hobbled over and opened the fridge pulling out a can of seltzer. “Seems that way, who the fuck knows, they had something on us though, knew were we would be, what we had planned, fuck, Danny! They got Danny last night.”

She grabbed my arm. “Shhh not here. Later at L10. I will see about him with XY and Mother”.

“Stef the landlord’s helper over there can fuck off. I don’t care if they hear me talking about them, Danny needs to get out of there.” I must have looked crazed and sick because Stef took a step back, ashen.

“Eh…Mike…what was that?” “What…what was what?” Mae again.

She had these green eyes Mae, almost emerald green. She was…what was she again? I can’t remember it seemed like a lifetime ago. Mae and the house. She had that townhouse. I shook again.

“That, that look, the shake. It seemed like you went somewhere. Are you sure you are ok? Should I call in?”. She was serious. When she was really serious she would get angry and her eyes would narrow, her mouth purse up. She looked a bit like a cat when she did it, suspicious, animal like.

“You can’t miss a day. Not right now, not with the you know what and the blood in the water…so to speak. I am good” I was not good. My leg was getting worse and I think my right eye was twitching. I had the strangest sensation of looking out through someone else’s eyes. Like I was a passenger on a bus made of Mike. Just for a second and then I dropped back into my body.

“You go honestly, I will light one up and L8 with Teacher and Kropotkin” She looked unconvinced but slowly her face reassembled into human form.

“All right but I might risk leaving my plant on so you can contact me when you need to”. I was about to say don’t take the risk, but she raised her hand and gave me smile. Nope, no argument there. I know when to shut my mouth. It’s one of my good habits, so I am told. She turned to leave, and Mae was there again. Standing where Stef was. I swear Mae standing there in a white dress, like an old style wedding dress. I nearly dropped my drink. I heard the door close. How long was I standing there? I had no idea. Stef was gone. Mae was gone. My seltzer was empty. I pulled out another.

Maybe I did have a concussion, but I don’t remember getting hit anywhere but the leg last night. My arms were stiff. I had to carry, more like drag, someone off the front lines. They had collapsed. They had shit gear and the new semi lethal grade CS had leaked in. That mixed with the heat from the fire had knocked them out. I saw them fall and Deez and I ran over. That’s when I got hit. I heard a crack. Not a bang like a flash bang and it’s not like a film gunshot. More like a whip sound. You don’t realize at first but Deez saw it. “Shit they got ya Van”, they shouted as we were dragging this kid back behind the barricade of old palettes and fencing. The adrenaline was pumping, and the police line was advancing, so I didn’t have time to worry about it. I can see the line now. It’s clear, backlit by fire and CS, like ants swarming on a crumb. They were writhing on top of this one person and I realize it’s Danny. I see his face. I can picture it now he looks like…Mae. Mae and she is sitting in a big bay window. Light is pouring in and she is sitting there in a white dress. I think it is a cottage: low ceilings and the floor is tiled or maybe stone. I am standing there, just standing, staring. I have never been here, but I feel like I have some-how. She is drinking tea or something hot. I see the steam coming up from the cup and she raises it to her lips. Fuck.

Where am I? I was in the shower, on autopilot. The steam filled the room. I sat down. My heart was racing. I took some deep breaths and tried a few mindfulness exercises that Stef had taught me. My leg was throbbing but my head-ache and the pain in my arms had gone away. I was picturing my calm place. The sea. The sea near where I grew up. The sand dunes and the smell of salt and seaweed. The waves rolling in and the wind rustling in the reeds. I picture a gull slowing circling overhead. There is a tug on my arm. I look up and…knocking on the door.

“Mike are you in there. You ok Mike?” It was Deez.

“Yeah gimmie a minute”, I shout back. I turn the water off and grab a towel from the rack. I start drying myself and Deez is on a rant,

“Sorry I let myself if. Your door was open by the way. That is asking for trouble, know what I mean. Got to be careful. Don’t want to say why cause you have that thing in the corner, but you know it isn’t safe these days. I have a five to zero problem with a certain friend of ours and my place was not secure, so I came around here. Did you see that post form the North Arms Community Unit? They were calling the PN Liberation Org in about their cop talker issues.. I know I shouldn’t say it but got to agree right. Getting toxic. Did I ever tell you about the food pantry upstate and..”

I opened the door wrapped in my towel. “Can you give me two minutes Deez. I think Stef made coffee before she left”.

“Oh sure, sure, how’s the leg?”,

“it’s fine. I just need a minute to pull myself together.” I started shuffling towards my room. Deez can be like that. Sometimes it makes me want to sack it all in you know. I work too hard and it seems to get nowhere. I work and work and. I stop, still dripping wet, hand on the handle of the bedroom. I have never thought about this as work. What work? This is my life. The Depression is in its tenth year and I like many others haven’t worked in a long time. Not much need for carpenters it seems. I still have the van and the tools but no use. I never complained about the politics before now. It must be I am tired. Burnt out. That will explain all the intrusive thinking. PTSD or something, maybe.

I got dressed. Deez was in the kitchen helping themselves to a coffee and some of my homemade bread. “Help yourself”, I said with a touch of venom in my voice that surprised me.

“What?, Oh sorry comrade I was so hungry. Not much in the house and I pretty much slept on a park bench”.

That will be the smell. I thought but didn’t say. Shit that is a bit judgmental. Deez has a rough life. No support, no family up here. Would be me without Stef. It is the burn out, I tell myself..

We leave the house and head towards the rendezvous point at café Altan. Altan is a vegan community café run by volunteers. It is always being raided by the police, but since they bought out the landlord through community bond efforts the raids have pretty much stopped.

We were walking to Altan and Deez was back to ranting about the movement,

“It’s because of you know, that they are all about maintaining the power. It’s a problem of absorbing the structures of the system into the structures of your own self. We can build self-reflective units of change, right here right now you know. We just need to concentrate on dismantling the existing power structures and building something new.”

I found my mind wandering to last night. After I got shot and that kid we pulled away was with the medic teams. I wandered off didn’t I. It is weird how your mind remembers some things. The trauma, the anger, but hides all the other good stuff. The feeling of solidarity, of pulling together to do something good. I wandered off and I was going home but I didn’t go home first. Where did I go. I stop. Deez stops.

“What’s up?” They ask.

“Did we go somewhere after the protest last night?’

“What dya mean?” Deez’s mouth hangs open when they think. I hadn’t noticed before how it disgusts me

“Did we, you and I, go somewhere, after the protest?”

“Did we go somewhere what like a bar?” It is vile.

“Yes, a bar, a fucking party, I dunno, somewhere, somewhere?”

Mae is leaning over me kissing my forehead. She is holding a beer in her hand. A large flat screen dominates the room. Two women pummel each other in such high def that I can see the cuts as they open up on their cheeks.

Deez was about 500 feet from me when I came around. They were walking quickly in the direction of the underpass.

“Deez, shit, wait!” I ran after them. They turned and I saw a look of abject terror on their face. “Deez, Deez I’m sorry” I shouted. They started running. “Fuck sake Deez”. We got to the underpass. Deez spun round holding a can of mace. “Back the fuck off Mike. I don’t know what the hell is up with you, but this is not ok” “For fuck sake Deez. I am just feeling it after last night.” I took a step forward and they lift up the can to eye height. “Back the fuck off Mike!. I will fucking mace you”. That fucking dumb face of theirs. I could smash it in. Keep smashing their ugly fucking head until it was mush. No one would care. Useless fucking waste.

I started to back off and let them go. Deez turned and ran.

I thought about calling Stef. I took out my old phone. I didn’t have a job that needed the plant and I was never one for new tech and anyway. You always want to be able to leave something that can track you at home if you are up to something you don’t want folks to know about.

I had a missed call from an unknown number and a voice mail.

“Mike this is Fox. You are overdue by 6 weeks as of Monday. If you do not respond a tactical team will assist you in extraction. Seven, Seven, Eight, Four, North Falconer and 82nd. Mae and the boys are asking for you.”

Mae and I are in the forecourt of the dealership. She is squeezing my hand. The dealer asks who is going to drive and I take the keys. It’s a man’s vehicle I tell him. Mae laughs and gives me a soft punch on my arm. It’s a real car not one of these electric lib mobiles that people drive. A real American vehicle with real horsepower. It will look good in the drive. Most of the team have one and I was always getting roasted for the station wagon.

Half of me staggered out of the underpass. I felt sick. What the fuck had happened. Was it brain damage. I needed to call Stef. Where was the phone? It was gone. I had thrown it into a storm drain. That address repeating, repeating. The voice of Fox like a drill in my head. The tinnitus clanging. Fox saying Seven, Seven, Eight, Four North Falconer and 82nd, and Mae, Mae in a gingham dress it is 4th of July. I am cooking hot dogs. Mae is in the back. She has been crying about something, but people are coming over and I am half drunk. The sausages are burning. The fireworks on the river. A boat passes with a flag waving from the stern. Happy people. Mae is crying somewhere about something I have done.

Three young looking people passed me in bloc. They carried respirators. It wasn’t fire season, so I knew what was up.

“Hey. Hey, do you know Stef, I mean Goldman? Do you know Goldman”, I shouted at them across the street.

They kept walking. “Hey, hey don’t fucking ignore me!” I crossed.

My nightstick hit the first one with a satisfying crack across the neck. It crumpled over and I got the second one behind the knee. Faceplant. Didn’t see it coming. The third one took off running and Gary got it up against the fence. Started laying in. It is on the ground and Garry pulls out his dick and just starts pissing. I am roaring behind the face shield.

The three kids were speaking into their plants. They must have been about sixteen, seventeen. They looked freaked out. They carried school backpacks and one had on a blazer for the local prep school.

“Sorry, sorry, shit, sorry” I said and ducked down an alley by the side of the overpass.

The cars overhead soothed my tinnitus. I sat down with my back to a concrete baffle and tried the mindfulness exercise. I am by the sea, the waves, the sound of gulls, and in the distance I hear a car approaching, a hand is on my shoulder, I turn, I look up, it is Mike. Clean shaven, short hair. He leers over me, his face contorted in rigor mortis ecstasy.

“Mike, Mike, get to your feet you prick? Where the fuck have you been? Look at you, you look like an antifa cunt”

Fox was standing over me. His round, pudgy face had someone got redder in the past 5 years.

“You look like shit pal. Too deep are we?”

“You look like a fucking drunk Fox. Rosacea must be all the way down to your balls by now?”

Fox leaned over and thumped me round the ear: flat palm. Then a dig to my stomach, full force, that knocked me onto my side.

“Fucking pussy, getting weak on that soy. Getting like a little bitch”

I struggled back up to sit, breathing hard.

“Not too much of a pussy to kick your ass, you fat fuck”

Fox grunted and laughed. His belly undulating under his tight Under-armor t-shirt and tactical vest.

“Still a little shit I see. Good because you have some explaining to do to your fucking wife.”

Fox picked me up. “I should cuff you to make it look good, but I don’t think you will be back out here after your little fuck up will you”.

He still stuck me in the back of car as we drove away from my old life. Some appearances needed to be kept up after all. There would be someone taking my place tomorrow and they needed a good story. Something believable, something true.