doppelgänger fantasia part 1

Vancouver 1949

She moved cautiously down the passage, a long dark red brick tunnel lined with dim yellow bulbs on fraying wires. She walked warily past mouldy abandoned crates and forgotten cargoes older than the city above. Footsteps ahead. Two sets. One light and quick, high heels. The pursued. The other heavy and determined, stout brogues. The pursuer. She stopped at a three way intersection and listened. She turned right. This section of tunnel lead down into murky light. The footsteps ahead suddenly stopped. A scuffle. A muted cry. She reached into her bag, and pulled out a .38. She stood very still and listened. A moment later, the heavy footsteps continued. Walking away in the distance. The quicker lighter steps did not resume. They remained silent.

“It’s a matchbook,” he said, and threw it back across the desk at Trudy Parr.

            “Yes,” said Trudy. “But your name and phone number are written inside.”

            “So?”

            “So it was found last night, next to the body of a murder victim in a tunnel under Chinatown.”

            “There are no tunnels under Chinatown,” he said. “That’s a myth.”

            Trudy Parr looked back at the man.

            “Okay,” he said. “So, why don’t you just hand that little item over to Nathan Schmidt? He runs Chinatown for the cops.”

            “Because he retires in two years. In three months they’ll take him off active, and put him at a desk for the remainder. He doesn’t give a damn about a Chinatown Jane Doe.”

            “And you do?”

            “Maybe.”

            “What were you even doing down there?”

            “Down where? I thought you said the tunnels were a myth.”

            The man smirked.

            “She had no ID in her purse,” said Trudy Parr. “The perp likely snatched it. But I recognised her. She was in the Lily Lounge last night. I saw her there. Then I saw her dead in the tunnels. Were you in the Lily last night, Barney?”

            “I don’t go to Chinatown, Trudy. I’m a white man. And the Lily ain’t my kinda joint.”

            “What is your kind of joint, Barney?”

            “Look, this ain’t none of your business. You’re just a broad with a PI license who should be home raising kids. You got no business grillin’ me.”

            “It’s my business if I say it is….”

            “You see, this is why I don’t like you and that Dench bastard. You do way too much pro bono work in this town. Who’s gonna pay you for looking into some dead hooker’s murder?”

            “Who said she was a hooker?”

            The man hesitated, and said, “Hooker, Blessed Virgin – who gives a damn? But dead in a tunnel under Chinatown probably means hooker. And the matchbook? What if I just take it? What are you gonna do? Don’t it make it mine if my name’s inside?”

            “That’s a dumb question, Barney. You’re smarter than that.”

            The man stood up. Trudy Parr remained seated at her desk. He looked down at her. She was calm. Maybe even amused.

It was all rumour as far as he was concerned, nothing substantiated. Just a lot of stories. The fatal Trudy Parr of Dench and Parr Investigations. A spy for the Allies in Nazi occupied Paris. That was where she’d learn to kill, had become an assassin. Now she sat there looking like Veronica Lake in a little black Italian dress and a simple gold pendant. The eyes too blue. The skin too pale. A view of the intersection of West Hastings and Cambie in the window behind her. The cenotaph across the street. The incriminating matchbook in front of her. Both of her hands on the desktop.

            “I don’t yield to no skirt,” the man said. “On principle.”

            Trudy Parr smiled.

            “Give me the matches, nice like,” he said.

            “Take ‘em, tough guy.”

            The corner of his mouth twitched, and his eyes moved between Trudy’s and the matchbook. Then he moved as fast as he could. But it wasn’t fast enough. Trudy Parr’s hand snatched the matches away too quickly. She wheeled back on her desk chair, and then reached underneath it. There was a straight razor there, held in place with a single strip of masking tape. She retrieved it, and got to her feet fast. All he’d remember later was the silver glint of the blade. The man knew what it was, and stumbled backward. As he reached into his jacket for his revolver. Trudy Parr stepped out from behind her desk and applied the blade to the man’s throat, faster than it seemed possible. He walked backward slowly and stopped at the wall behind him. “Go ahead, tough guy,” She said. “Pull your gun. I’m already drawing blood.” A red bead dripped and stained his white collar.

            “Jeeze,” he said. “Lighten up, Trudy.”

            “You’re a big bully of a man, Barney. I hate that. I brought you in on this as a courtesy. One east ender to another. And you go and get all tough. Like I’m gonna fold all of a sudden, and play the quail. Well fuck you. The inlet’s just down the road, and who’d weep over you being fished out of it in a day or two all cold and wet and dead?”

            She reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out his Smith and Wesson. Dropping the razor and holding the gun, she took a step back and said, “Now reach down and take that .32 off your ankle and slide it over.” He did what she said, and then stood up.

There was a gentle knock on the door, and Crispin Dench stuck his head in.  “Oh,” he said. “Bad timing?”

“No, no,” said the man with his back against the wall, bleeding from the superficial wound to his throat. “Please. Come in.”

“Barney Polenski, old man,” Dench said. “You’re not looking so hot, pal.”

“Get this broad off me, Dench.”

“You’re bleeding from the throat, Barney,” said Dench. “That’ll ruin a good shirt. Though it does go with your tie, in a perverse sort of way.”

“Control this damn woman.”

“Can’t do it, Barney. Tried once. Nearly got me killed. I’m sure you can commiserate considering your current situation. I’ll just return to my office. I just came in to ask for a file I need for an upcoming court appearance, but it can wait.”

“Which one,” said Trudy Parr.

“Cummings, William H.,” said Dench.

“I’m finished with it. I had Agnes file it in the lockdown cabinet. Under C.”

“Ah,” said Dench. “Grand. Bye for now.” He closed the door.

“Grab your coat, Barney,” Trudy Parr said. “You’re stinkin’ the place up.”

“What’re you gonna do about all this,” he said.

“I don’t know yet. It’ll be interesting to see if someone claims the body. Anything you wanna add before I throw you out?”

“I think you know I didn’t ice her. You’d have handled it different, otherwise.”

“And?”

“Look, this whole thing is too damn strange. She was strange. It don’t surprise me she was in the Lily Lounge.”

“Meaning?”

“I guess you’d know better than me,” said Barney, “if you go there yourself. It’s no skin off my teeth. I figure you can’t help the stone you was cut from. What you do with another person behind closed doors….”

“Give me something now, Barney. These things have a rapid way of unfolding on their own. Names are revealed, motives, lethal little details. The players who cough up early usually come out the cleanest. Later evidence can be damning, and deadly. Don’t make me seek you out in some dark place after your name starts dropping from all the wrong ceilings.”

He looked at his shoes. Not stout brogues, but Trudy Parr already knew this. They were cheap Mexican straight tips.

“Sometimes I play the bad guy,” he said. “I know it. But I got hurt bad in the war.”

“We all did, Barney. Let’s not cry over spilled schnapps.”

“Well I ain’t had the opportunities some others have had. So, now I’m just trying to make a living. Someone says, ‘Here, Barney. Here’s a hundred bucks to follow some skirt for a couple days. Take some notes on her. Report back.’ What am I supposed to do? Say no?”

“Who hired you?”

“Just some guys. I – I don’t know. They told me where and when to show up. That’s all.”

“You took notes?”

“In my head.”

“Feel like sharing?”

He looked up from his shoes. Suddenly, he didn’t look like a street thug anymore. Just very scared. “Look, there’s some fucking crazy people in town right now. If I’d known from the getgo, I’d have declined the offer of work. Now I got you trying to cut off my head. And by this afternoon, they’ll know I was here. They’ll have to assume I spilled. I may be walking dead already.”

“So leave a legacy, Barney. Throw me a bone. Maybe I can save your sorry life.”

His shoes again. He looked at them as though they meant something. “The girl,” he said. “There’s two of them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? She’s got a sister?”

“Nah. I mean there’s actually two of them. Identical, but not twins. The same person times two. I didn't believe it at first, either. Now there’s just one, of course. Which I think might calm everyone down. It seemed like it was the two of them here at the same time that got everyone bent outta shape. Now there's just some loose ends to deal with. Like some of the people on the edge of this caper who know too much.” He looked up with an ironic smile. It surprised Trudy Parr. "The reason she had that matchbook is I gave it to her. I thought she was kinda sweet. The dead one, I mean."

"You tried to date your target?"

"It's a lonely town. She wasn't interested, anyway."

“So, she’s gone,” said Trudy. “In the morgue. Where’s the other one?”

Barney Polenski shrugged like a little boy.

“Give me a name,” said Trudy Parr.

“Bittle,” said Barney after a moment.

“Her name was Bittle?”

“No. I never knew her name. They just gave me a photo, and an idea where to start. They never gave me their names, either. Not real ones, anyway. They were all Mr One, Mr Two, Mr Three. Get it? And they were Russian. I’m pretty sure.”

“Russian?”

“Yeah, but not Bolsheviks. I met some of them in Berlin in ’45. These characters were different. Smoother. More refined. But there was one name that came up real frequent. It sounded like one of those British officer names I heard a lot in Europe. Alastair Bittle. Or Dr Bittle. I heard that, too. They liked to talk like I wasn’t there, so I heard some shit. Once or twice, they called him the Time Doctor.

Maybe I should leave town.”

“Maybe, Barney.”

Trudy Parr escorted Barney Polenski to the elevator. The operator pretended no to notice the bleeding.

“Lobby,” Trudy Parr said. And the doors slid shut.

Polenski put on his coat in the lobby, and exited the Dominion Building. He pulled the collar up to hide the wound, and crossed Cambie Street. When he was in front of the Flack Block on Hastings, Crispin Dench stepped out of a shadow.

“Hold up, Barney,” Dench said.

“What now? I gotta see a doctor.”

“Just one thing,” Dench said. Polenski noticed how he looked different now. How the dapper figure in the office had transformed. Staring out from under the brim of his hat, lighting a cigarette. “Thing about guys like you, Barney, is that you always come back for more. That accounts for your lower life expectancy. What happened up there with Trudy’s a good example. I figure you’ll go get patched up, get shit face, and devise some plan for Trudy’s demise – shaddup. Don’t make me slap you. You know I’m right. A mug like you won’t let a skirt get away with what Trudy did to you up there, even if it means shooting her in the back. Because you’re yellow. And you know you’re out classed. Your plan will involve some of your close associates. Because you already failed dealing with her alone. You won’t tell them what actually happened. You’ll make something up. Outstanding debt or some other bullshit. Then you’ll wait for the right moment to get her. You figure that’ll restore your manhood. I wish she’d deal with crumbs like you differently. But she refuses to listen. I guess it’s part of her charm. But I’ve never seen her hurt anyone unless they had it coming.

“So, here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna get fixed up. You’re gonna explain the scar by saying you were in a street fight with some greasers. You were outnumbered, but you prevailed. Real heroic. And you’re gonna forget about what happened up there with Trudy. That clear?”

“Yeah sure, Crispin.”

“You remember Albert Falconi? That little Mafia wanna be son of a bitch they found in the trunk of his Buick up Little Mountain last year? The little fuck they found with two bullet holes in his head? He told me he was clear about an issued we’d discussed, too. Except he wasn’t clear at all. Turned out that he thought he was smarter than me. You drive a Buick don’t you, Barney? Nice fat ’48 Roadmaster? Plenty big trunk on that beast. I could fit two or three of you into that.”

“Jesus, Crispin. I thought you was legit.”

“I’m legit when it pays the bills, and when those near to me aren’t under threat.” It was a harsh whisper.

“I’m small time. I ain’t gonna cause no trouble.”

“I don’t like small timers, Barney. They all want to be big timers when they grow up.”

“Not me, Crispin – Mr Dench. I’m thinking of leaving town.”

“That’s a good idea, Barney. There’re trains leaving everyday from down the street. Sell your possessions and head east. I hear Winnipeg’s a nice town for second rate hoods needing to cool their heels. Forget the city of Vancouver for a while. Think of it as a bad dream by the sea.”

“Yeah, Crispin,” Barney Polenski said. “That just might be the fix.” He cautiously stepped around Crispin Dench, and began walking away, looking over his shoulder every few steps until he was lost in the crowd.

Stayed tuned for part 2, coming soon....

top 10 things Stephen Harper says in his sleep

10. Oh hold me, Preston.

  9. I’m sort of like Pinocchio. Whenever I lie about the F-35s, my penis grows.

  8. I'm proud to make the Race to the Bottom an Olympic event.

  7. I’m really a cat guy. I like it crispy with a tomato salad and a tart, refreshing Riesling.

  6. When it comes to robo-calls, just call me R2-D2.

  5. Given the chance, I’d legislate dirt back to work.

  4. I sell fear; the ‘more prisons’ idea sells itself.

  3. Sometimes when I stand real still and smirk like a vacuous wiener, I feel just like a chunky GQ model.

  2. It’s hard having so many foreign funded radical environmentalists and money launderers in Canada. I hate disappointing China.

  1. I wish I were black like Barack.

insulin induced hypoglycaemia and perceived suicidal ideation (a true story)

Okay. So, here’s my side of the story of what happened yesterday – how I ended up in the St Paul’s Hospital Emergency Ward, certified under the BC Mental Health Act.

            7:30 a.m.: I wake up and take my normal dose of insulin, have a shower and eat my normal breakfast. I have a 10 a.m. counselling appointment at Three Bridges, a health unit connected to Vancouver Coastal Health. It will be my second appointment with the counsellor. She’s a competent counsellor, in my opinion, but not a psychiatrist. Despite my GP’s best efforts, and in spite of being bipolar, I continue to go without a psychiatrist due to a shortage in the Metro Vancouver area.

I leave at 9:30, and walk to Three Bridges. It’s a half hour walk. I arrive on time, and my counsellor and I begin our session.

From the start, in retrospect, I feel out of sorts. I’m perspiring, even though the air conditioning is on. There’s a disconnect between my cognitive and verbal functioning. Time passes strangely. The session seems to be taking forever one moment. The next, time is flying by. I feel disoriented. My mood is darkening. I’m nervous. I’m having all of the classic symptoms of insulin induced hypoglycaemia. My peripheral vision decreases until I’m looking down a tunnel. Ironically, the cognitive deficit that accompanies hypoglycaemia makes it extremely difficult to self-diagnose and treat.

Hypoglycaemia happens occasionally to people who inject insulin. One tries to avoid it, but it happens nonetheless. And there’s never a good time for it to occur. I carry dextrose tablets just in case, but this time, for reasons mentioned above, it didn’t occur to me to take them.

            Suddenly and morosely, without prompting, I start talking about how horrible it is to be alone while in a suicidal state. I’m not actually suicidal. I’m just remembering episodes from my past. It’s something I unexpectedly feel I need to get off my chest. But I’m not explaining myself very well. The counsellor doesn’t get it. She believes I’m expressing actual real time suicidal ideation. She offers to call an ambulance. I look at her like she’s stupid, which she isn’t. Why would I need an ambulance, silly girl? Then I notice the clock on the wall says 11 a.m. To my disoriented mind, the session has ended. I stand up and leave without saying goodbye. The counsellor follows me out. She’s speaking, but I don’t hear what she’s saying. I leave the building.

            Out on the street, it’s all tunnel vision – no peripheral. My feet aren’t working properly. Because my brain doesn’t have sugar to burn for fuel, I don’t think of this as strange. I begin to walk back to my apartment. When I’m a block from home, I encounter the police. My counsellor had done what she had to do. Believing I was suicidal and on the run, she called the cops.

There were four of them, waiting for me at the coffee shop at the end of my street. The coffee shop where I was going for a bite of lunch, because I was suddenly feeling very hungry. The cops had been to my apartment, but not being there, they’d figured that I might show up at the coffee shop. They weren’t a happy bunch. I’m sure they would have rather been busting international drug cartels.

“You the suicide,” one of them said. “No,” I said back. “Show us some ID.” I did. “It’s him.”

My blood sugars were getting lower by the moment. I didn’t get any lunch. We waited an hour for an ambulance. It never came. By then, I had become completely incoherent.

The cops had to drive me to the hospital. “We should cuff you,” one of them said. But they didn’t. I guess I seemed a little dim, but harmless. At the hospital, they informed me that I had been certified under the BC Mental Health Act, which meant I had lost my liberty. They took my clothes and shoes away, and put me in the emergency. A nurse came and did what nurses do with a new admission, including poking my finger to take a blood glucose reading. It was 1.3 mmol/L by then. The safe range is between 4 and 7 mmol/L. Normally, when in this lower range, I go into seizures. A little lower, I lose consciousness. It must have been the delightful and engaging company of the police that kept all of that from happening this time.

“Are you diabetic, Mr Gillis,” asked the nurse. “Yes.” “Inject insulin?” “Yes, of course. Doesn’t everybody?” “Your blood sugars are dangerously low.” Accusatory. “Do you know why?” “Give me five minutes alone with a Snickers Bar, and I’ll answer all of your questions.”

            I didn’t get a Snickers Bar, damn it. Just cup after cup of dreadful hospital orange juice and sugar water. In the end, they got my sugars up to 12 mmol/L. High but safe, in the short term.

I was still certified, however. A danger to myself under the BC Mental Health Act.  The only hope of getting decertified, and avoiding transfer from the emergency ward to the psych ward, would be in getting my story straight, and presenting it in a convincing way to the emergency ward physician and the psychiatrist who would eventually come to my bedside.

So, I worked it all out. I’d had an abnormally low blood sugar – who knows why these things happen? It had affected my acuity at a critical time – during a counselling session with a counsellor who was diligent in following through with office protocol when dealing with self-harm potential and the expression of suicidal ideation. I wasn’t truly suicidal. But during a vulnerable moment, I’d come across as such. Part of the proof of my vulnerability was the fact of my extremely low blood sugar upon admission. But what if they thought I’d overdosed on insulin on purpose? No, too weird. Even for hyper-vigilant hospital types.

Okay, so I’m happy – but not too happy. My words are sane and measured. My ideas are clear. Rational brevity sits at the core of talking your way out of a psych ward admission, even when the odds are stacked against you. And there was no way I was going into the St Paul’s Hospital snake pit if I could avoid it.

I was visited twice by the emergency ward physician, once when I first came in, and later after I’d recovered from hypoglycaemia. He seemed to buy into my story – which was true, after all. But if there’s one thing that all emergency ward physicians know, it’s that certified psych patients are like death row inmates, everyone’s innocent. I had, after all, been reported by a professional, and brought in by the police. They’d hovered over me like dour helicopter parents as I waited for a bed in the emergency ward. And I was bipolar, besides, with two suicide attempts already under my belt. Pure charm wasn’t going to cut it. I had to focus and prepare myself for the psychiatrist’s visit. It was her assessment that would make all of the difference.

I waited and waited. I’d arrived at 1 p.m. The psychiatrist didn’t appear until after eight. I was afraid boredom might be misinterpreted. I tried to stay alert and interested. They don’t draw the curtain on potential suicides, so I was able to watch the goings-on on ward. One patient was trying to cough up his remaining lung. Another, down the hall, was screaming and moaning, and calling the staff terrible names. Yet another had a foot swollen to the size of a beach ball, and told lurid, unfunny jokes to the smirking nurses. I listened to the buzzes and beeps of the life life-support and diagnostic machinery. I was chipper and accommodating, but not too chipper and accommodating, whenever nurses or lab techs came to drain me of blood. I watched one housekeeping staffer wash the floor four times over. It was like watching an aquarium filled with people.

Then the psychiatrist finally arrived. She was dressed casually, the way psychiatrists do to put patients at ease. I’ve always resented it. I figure, for what a psychiatrist earns, he or she can try to dress a little better than the background population. I don’t want to be treated by a Walmart shopper. But she wasn’t seeking my opinion on her dress. She asked me all the usual questions. How’s your mood? Do you have a suicide plan? Can you describe your system of supports? What about your family, any nut bars? What are your interests? I pointed to my well tanned face – we’ve been enjoying some mighty fine May weather, so I had some good colour. Was this the healthy tan of a potential suicide? I described my work with the psych department of a local university on psycho-social interventions and knowledge translation. I spoke of my work, with another St Paul’s psychiatrist, on a local radio program designed to help eliminate the stigma attached to mental illness. Did I really seem like a suicide to her? No, she said. But I can’t let you go without a follow-up. And I have to decertify you. Give me twenty minutes.

By 9:30 p.m., I was free again. I walked down Robson Street on my way home. It was a warm May evening. People were out eating Italian ice cream. There were classic cars and motorcycles cruising the strip. There was that buzz that comes on an urban spring evening just before the dwindling sun light completely disappears.

When I got home, I ate almost everything in my fridge.

My counsellor at Three Bridges did the right thing in calling the police. But I came away from this experience wondering if there could be protocols in place to help avoid it happening in the first place.

1. Could people sitting in on counselling sessions be asked if they have type 1 diabetes during the intake assessment?
2. Could counsellors acquaint themselves with safe blood glucose levels and the symptoms of hypoglycaemia by referring to tools like the Canadian Diabetes Association’s Clinical Practice Guidelines?
3. Could the Canadian Diabetes Association include protocols for counsellors in its upcoming Clinical Practice Guidelines?
4. Could those with type 1 diabetes be asked to bring their blood glucose meters and emergency sugar to counselling sessions, and test before the session begins?
5. Could those with type 1 diabetes be asked to test during a counselling session whenever the counsellor judges their behaviour odd or abnormal?

top 10 Safeway P.A. announcements you’ll never hear

10. Visit our meat department. It smells good.

9. Will the mob of ESL students in the produce section stop pawing the merchandise. This ain’t Bangladesh.

               8. Clean up in the Depends isle.

7. We get our tomatoes from the same place as the Korean grocer down the street, and we charge more.

6. Try our automated check-out. It’s one more unionised employee down the crapper, and we pocket the savings.

               5. Hey you in the dairy section, stop scratching yourself.

4. Today’s specials include products with prices that are artificially excessive and exorbitant, but that have been temporarily reduced to actual market values in our attempt to create false economy and mask our strategic, corporate plan to drive inflation and suck you dry. Have a nice day.

               3. Your donation to the food bank makes us look like we care.

2. Our in-house bakery items are as good as anything served in prison.

1. Please, if you see a homeless person with a Safeway shopping cart, push him or her into traffic and call the police immediately.

a dog barks in vancouver

He considered the brown Bukowski light, and the smell. The blunted sirens and yells, even screams, from adjacent rooms. The toilet down the hall. The window that wouldn’t close. It had been stuck in the same position since 1954, but he couldn’t know that. The door so thick with successive coats of paint that all detail was lost, the perimeter moulding gone long ago, drowned in layers of beige, blue and yellow. The brass doorknob buffed to shine like a gemstone by the palms of thousands of tenant hands; each hand more desperate as the decades passed. The wiring that had long ago given up the inner walls, and had migrated out to occupy the silver conduit along the counter and ceiling. The bed, a single iron pipe pallet. The linen and mattress decaying beneath him as he lay there.  His eyes registered it all. They were blue, red and quick. His hands clenched into arthritic fists. He was certain this was the place. The place that would hold him, fixed like carbon in a tree or a monster in amber.

There was a small table and a heavy chrome kitchen chair.  There was a knife and fork. A tow yard ashtray. A transistor radio. A torn copy of Anthony Powell’s Casanova's Chinese Restaurant. He’d read each line of that book like it was a stone in a slingshot. Page 127 marked with a corner store receipt. 57 VARITIES on a shelf. A wall socket without a faceplate. The sink, a gate into a raging underworld that would rise up in the night and possess him in his dreams. Where the demons came from. From whence the voices originated.

This was the place.

He’d always known that when he did it, he’d do it away. Away from anyone who knew him. Away from any street upon which he’d ever made eye contact. They wouldn’t find him. They wouldn’t have his mess to deal with.  No sorrow to know. No tight lipped conflict between regret and nuisance. In this place, there would only be his uncomfortable absence as an inconvenient odour saturated the hall. Familiar to the weary management who would hesitate at the door, but who would, nonetheless, dutifully, turn the key. Then the police and the coroner. And then, namelessly, he would be physically gone. Only the ghost of him remaining. To stand in the corner. To vex the next poor bastard in his dark and heroin night.

The mental health worker, a psych nurse, had asked him, “Do you have a plan? The Confidentiality Agreement we signed together states very clearly that I have to report any and all cases of suspected suicidal and/or homicidal ideation.”

A plan? he’d thought. Forever. He’d sat silent and smiling in his chair. Passive. Across the desk from her. In his shoes without socks. With his filthy fingernails. His hair uncombed. Smelling like the thirteenth century. I’ve had a plan since I could recognise myself in the mirror. “No,” he’d replied. “No plan.”

He had fought the plastic razor blade cartridge into submission the night before. The plastic was hard and hostile. He’d taken it from the trash. Blunted by a stranger’s bread. Contaminated with a stranger’s blood and epidermis. He, himself, hadn’t shaved for weeks. Fresh, sharp razors were a luxury of the sane. He remembered cutting his girlfriend’s name into his forearm when he was young. He turned his arm over now to look. Rebeca. Misspelled. For life.  He smiled and bit down hard on his tongue.

Sitting up on his bed, he saw the naked blue blades on the table. Three from a single three edged cartridge. He’d cut himself enough in the past to know the pain involved. The ecstasy and blood. But this would be deep and lasting. He wouldn’t be returning to gloat over the scar.

It’s a thing to consider, the evolution of the razor blade. He scratched his itchy Rebeca scar. How once they’d been awkward yet elegant. Handy in a scrap. How they had become safe with the safety razor. And now innocuous and rarely even thought of as they were daily applied to the skin. Hurrying over the surface of us, the flesh, over the thin barrier between life and terrible epiphany. He picked up a singled blue sliver of steel. He saw the yellow bulb above him glint.

There was no note. He had deposited his ID in a trash bin the day before. The document of his life was wordless. All that remained was the moment. The absence of angels. We all die alone, he’d heard in a movie once. It sounded like a worn out bit of stuff back then.  But now he concurred. He was finally so happily, so ruinously alone.

It is an obvious thing, yet rarely thought of. That a right handed man would cut his left wrist and forearm first, and only his right upon realising it was the only reasonable thing left to do. He thought of this as the blade cut in to his left wrist. He had planned it, mapped it. A vertical line from there. A river seen from space. Evolving faster than geological circumstance would normally allow. He would watch it evolve. He had thought about it endlessly.

He cut along his wrist from below his left thumb to a position below his left ring and middle fingers. He was twisting the blade now for the ascent up the length of the forearm. Into the wilderness of previously uncut, unexplored flesh. An ecstasy was overtaking him. He was faced, not for the first time, with the tricky understanding that cutting didn’t sting. Instead, it created a dull and profound ached accompanied by an intense burning. He shuttered and gasped as he redirected the blade. And there came a loud banging on the door.

He looked up without removing the blade. More banging. The words “Open up” shouted from the hall. A dog began to bark. It was a close, alien sound. Different from the ravings of his neighbours. Then the loud banging on the door and the barking of the dog began to merge. “Open up, you bitch. I want my money.” Bang bang bang. Woof woof woof. “I’ll kick the fucking door in, swear to god.” Woof woof woof.

“Shit”, he spit, and threw the little sliver of steel across the room. “Hold on, hold on.”

“Better open up, mother fucker.”

He got to the door and opened it. Standing before him in the hall was a tall emaciated man with bad skin and a stringy bread. He wore an unwashed nylon track suit and a baseball cap with the bill slightly askew. “Where’s Rosy,” the man yelled. “Bitch owes me $150 and change. Bitch can’t do me like this. Bitch is gonna pay.” In his right hand was a lead. Pulling at the end was a large, overly excited mutt. Woof woof woof. “Wadda you, her fucking pimp? I hate pimps, man. Don’t make me fuck you up. Gimme the money.”

“I don’t know any Rosy,” he said. “I’ve only been here two days. The place was vacant when I rented it.”

“’Xpect me to believe that shit?”

“I don’t care what you believe,” he said. And then he saw the man’s gaze fall onto his left wrist and hand. A vein was pumping and the fingers dripped blood.

“Motha fucka,” said the man with the dog, trying to sound like a black LA gangsta. He was white as the driven snow. “What you do to yourself? Whatever it is you got goin’ on in yo head ain’t worth it, man. You gotta choose life.”

“Hey, fuck you. Come back in a couple of hours, and take what you want.” He began to close the door.

“No no, man. Listen, I had an aunt in Windsor. She ate her whole medicine cabinet. Didn’t find her for a week. Closed casket, baby. Had to be on account of how long she been laying there. She left an awful big hole in the world, man. My mamma ain’t smiled since.” Woof woof woof. “Shut the hell up, Nigel.”

“Nigel? You named that mutt Nigel?”

“Yeah, it’s from the Latin – Nigellus. And he ain’t no mutt. Jus’ an indeterminate breed. He’s a killer, man. He’s stone cold.” Nigel had begun licking up the accumulating pool of blood. “Look, I’m callin’ 5-O, man. I can’t let this slide. My Karma’s thin and crispy as it is.”

“Don’t. Please. Just walk away.”

“Can’t.”

“Then what? You’re just going to stand there until I bleed to death?”

“That’s a bad cut, baby,” the man said. “But you ain’t gonna bleed out from that. I know some shit. You die of infection first.”

He grasped the door and tried to close it, with force. But the man stuck his foot in and stopped it. “Don’t do it, man.” Nigel was up and barking again. He was actually beginning to sound dangerous. He was forcing his snout in between the door and the door jam, baring his teeth and snarling between barks.

“Down, Nigel,” said the man. “Good dog.” Then he yelled, “Somebody call 5-O! Nigel, down.” Nigel was getting vicious in the excitement.  He could see the saliva flying off the big dog’s teeth. And then he heard the man in the hall say, fatalistically, “Oh shit.” The lead had slipped from his hand. Nigel sprinted into the room.

When he came to, a female ambulance attendant was applying a pressure bandage to his wrist. She gave him a sour look. He was on a gurney in his room. Two way radios crackled. He heard the words Mental Male. Another attendant was wiping blood away from the back of his head where he’d fallen against the table when Nigel jumped. Apparently, nothing could have stood between the dog and the half eaten can of pork and beans left over from the night before. When the cops stepped in, it was a full house.

“Told you not to mess with Nigel. One warning per person, baby. That’s all I got. That’s all I’m willing to provide. And that Rosy bitch still owes money.”

The Justice League reveals its plans for Stephen Harper

Have You Heard any word of the Iceberg?

by Les Barker

On a cold rainy night on a Liverpool quayside
In the years before the Great War
The world was in shock at the loss of Titanic
So proud had they been days before.
Relatives gathered for news of their loved ones,
To read through the list of the dead,
When into the throng came a sad-eyed Polar Bear,
And to the clerk at the counter he said…

Chorus:

Have you got any news of the iceberg?
My family were on it you see,
Have you got any news of the iceberg?
They mean the whole world to me.

My wife and children were coming from Greenland
To be by my side in the zoo.
Belinda's my wife and the eldest’s called Bernard,

and Billy, well, he’s only two.
I know on the ship there were hundreds of people,
And I know the iceberg’s not yours,
The Polar Bear’s eyes held the start of his teardrops
He covered his face with his paws.

It’s been over a year since I last saw my children,
I left home to build my career:
I've worked very hard, I’m a star in the circus,

It’s all been for nothing I fear.
There's my face on the poster,
We’re in town this week.
My Children were meeting me here.

 

Everyone watched as he struggled to speak.
By now all the people had gathered beside him,
His grief was one they could share,
The people around him in silence and sadness,
Listened to the sad Polar Bear.
I wanted my children to see me performing,
And Belinda, she would have been proud.
At last, lost for words and his tears flowing freely,
The question was asked by the crowd.

Chorus:

Have you got any news of the iceberg?
My family were on it you see:
Have you got any news of the iceberg?
They mean the whole world to me.