1
I have two lists – the Love List and the Hate List. The Love List is easy – Mum, Dad and the dog. Not much of a list really. It is a mere haiku when placed next to the epic Hate List, which is my Iliad, my War And Peace, my Old and New Testament. In its own way, the Hate List is just as easy as the Love List – everyone apart from Mum, Dad and the dog. Simple.
Those days when I can’t get out of bed, consult the Hate List for a blame hound – hate the government, for paying me next to fuck all just because I can’t find a job; the postman, for waking me up in the first place; ITV, for making early morning television so compellingly shit that I can’t take my eyes off the portable telly in the corner for long enough to throw aside the duvet.
Then, once I finally crawl from my stinking pit, sometime around noon, I can hate the milkman for not delivering my milk anymore, so I can’t have a cup of tea, and all because I owed him a paltry tenner. Actually, I hate that bastard more than most. I’m getting used to the taste of black coffee by now though, despite the fact I don’t even like coffee, but black tea? Not likely.
As I open the mail I hate everyone who’s sent me a bill – the electricity board, the council, the phone company. I hate everyone who hasn’t sent me a letter, or a postcard, or anything else. As the day wears on, I hate everyone who hasn’t phoned.
Later, as I carve meaningless words into my arms with a razor blade, I hate myself, I hate God, I hate the light and the dark, I hate everything. The razor drops into the sink and as the blood splashes the porcelain I hate every woman I ever met, every Medusa that ever fixed her stare on me and tricked me into feeling safe.
Afterwards, rubbing Savlon into the wounds, I even hate Mum and Dad. The dog stays on the Love List. He, at least, can never cross over. You can’t hate a dog.
2
Eating my dinner at eight o’clock, a quick and easy throw-together of beans and sausages on toast, I am sure it doesn’t taste quite right. I lift a forkful of beans to my nose and sniff. They smell like beans. Next I test one of the sausages and again it smells as it ought to, or at least I think it does. I lay the tray down on the floor and go through to the kitchen. The empty (apart from a coating of fluorescent bean-juice) tin can is still on the side in front of the toaster. I pick it up and sniff that too. Nothing untoward. I pick up the tin lid and look at it closely, looking for tiny holes where a syringe could have penetrated the thin metal and injected something poisonous into my Netto beans & sausages. Nothing. It could have been at the edge though, where the tin opener goes, and then I wouldn’t be able to see it. I look back into the living room where my dinner still sits in front of the sofa. I’m wondering if it’s worth the risk. It takes me a couple of seconds to decide it’s not, then I take the plate outside and scrape it into the dustbin. I go back inside, then turn around, back into the yard, and toss the plate and the knife and fork into the bin as well. They all came into contact with the (what if it wasn’t the) beans. Can’t possibly use them again. Hang on, what was that? What if it wasn’t the beans? Shit. What if it wasn’t? A few moments later half a loaf of bread and a nearly-full tub of cheap margarine are in the bin.
I’m still hungry but now I’m worried that if I eat something I might wake up in the middle of the night with chronic stomach cramps, doubled up in pain as an acidic poison eats away at my insides, causing my agonising death before I can even crawl to the phone, which might have been cut off by then anyway, judging by the insistent tone of the red letter which arrived in the morning post.
I decide against eating anything else for the time being.
(c) Nick Boldock, 2010
Author's Note: I wrote the beginning of this story some years ago during a Renegade Writers get-together. Later, I expanded on it but although I've always liked this first part, I've never really got round to taking it any further. Perhaps one day. For now though, make your own minds up how it finishes, why don't you?
