A Smaller Hell Read Free

comfortable.  I started by heating a pot of water over the fire and having a stand-up bath before the freezing night air started blowing through the cracks in the window frames.  Once I’d dressed again, I heated up a tin of curry, eating it with some naan bread toasted over the fire, the spice of the food creeping into my stiff bones as I reclined on my puffer jacket.
    Chewing the final mouthful, I heard the front gate to the house creak open and footsteps walk up to the front door.  I tried not to make any sound as I reached for the table leg and walked into the hallway, trying not to slip on the piles of ancient flyers for taxis, takeaways and escort services.  Whoever was delivering this latest one must have been tall, because it came sliding through the crack at the very top of the board and tumbled on to the pile like a dead oak leaf.  The gate creaked again and the heavy footsteps faded back down the street, so I picked up the flyer and took it into the parlour to read it by the fire.
    Temporary Christmas staff required for Tanner’s busiest time of the year.
    No qualifications or department store experience necessary.
    All applicants considered.
    Wide range of positions available.
    I checked my watch and ventured back out into the cold dusk to make a phone call from the booth outside The Captain’s Rest, a derelict pub near the river.  The vast wastelands stretched like fields of illuminated amber under the streetlights, beyond which I could see the odd light in a window or two on the estate in the distance.  I folded up the flyer and stuffed it in the pocket of my reefer jacket until I reached the phone box.  It stood alone and illuminated, blushing a flaky shade of red and pink as if embarrassed by its spray-painted panes of glass, rusty hinges and the dandelions growing inside it.
    I opened the door and picked up the receiver with two gloved fingers, trying to avoid the patches of dried bodily fluid.  I paid the tariff, dialed the number on the flyer and waited for an answer.
    Good afternoon Tanner’s Department Store how may we help you?
    ‘I’m calling about temp work over Christmas.’
    Hold the line please.
    Something moving about under the bridge way down the street.
    A squeal of tyres in the distance.
    Hello?  May I take your name?
    I thought about hanging up.
    Your name?
    ‘Tony Black,’ I replied.
    Please hold the line.
    Shouting from the amber meadows by the estate.  An old tyre up in flames.
    Several shadows coming this way from under the bridge.
    ‘Hurry up,’ I whispered away from the mouthpiece.
    Please report to Ms. Doyle’s office at 11 a.m. 
    ‘ Thank you bye,’ I said and hung up.  The rusty hinges of the phone box squeaked loudly, causing all the shadows under the bridge to break into a run towards me.  My trainers were light and almost silent as I took off running down the labyrinth of alleyways and backstreets to shake off my pursuers before I went back to the house.

P ipe Smoker
     
    The following morning, I caught the bus back to the village charity shop to see if I could find a shirt, suit and tie for the interview, but it was closed.  Up at the other end of the village high street, I found another, from which I bought a whole outfit for ten pounds.  It was no Hugo Boss and it fit my pocket better than it fit me, but it was better than the jeans which were covered in oily mud from the puddles I’d splashed through the night before.  She wished me luck as I ran out of the shop to catch the bus to the department store.
    On the way, I looked up from the left-behind newspaper and sniffed the air, trying to work out what the guy was smoking.  He sat two rows ahead on the left side of the bus, fumbling in the pockets of his dirty jacket every five minutes to produce a small glass pipe, but I could distinguish no smell above the bus' bouquet of black smoke, oil, urine and vomit.  His swift capping of the pipe with the lighter after smoking made it all the more