BiteMarks (2 page)

A solitary pearl of scarlet begins to roll down Meg's shin, a shallow scratch clawed by a stray thorn perhaps. Instinctively I lean down and gently wipe it away with my fingertip, then lean in close and touch my lips to the wound to kiss the pain away. A pair of butterflies dappled black, white and russet flit between the obstacle course of our prone forms in a riotous high-spirited waltz.  Soft wings pitter-patter a brief rapid rhythm against my cheek, then are gone again in a heartbeat, the warm breeze drying Meg's blood on my lips.

* * *

I have always felt most alive at night. Tonight is no exception, the warm breeze carries the promise of magic, caressing my pale skin and twisting patterns in dark hair that I wear longer than my employers like, but still shorter than I would prefer. It is starting to get late, the only illumination provided by sparse street-lighting like giant amber eyes hidden amongst the foliage of the large trees bursting out of the tarmac pavement.

There are occasional darker patches where there should be lights, bulbs repeatedly smashed by street dealers until the council gave up replacing them, and now dark silhouettes flit there selling 'rocks' and 'brown', crack cocaine and heroin for the walking dead. This is the Mapperley Park district of Nottingham, disarmingly beautiful by day, with large double bay-fronted properties prevalent along the wide tree-lined roads. Appearances are deceiving though, when the sun goes down this is the red-light district, populated by predatory pimps and their merchandise, street-walking parodies of sexuality readying to service their furtive clients.

It is my habit to take an interest in my surroundings, so I happen to know that the prostitution started here decades earlier when an army base was erected nearby, providing a steady stream of servicemen willing to pay for their pleasures. The base is now long gone, but the girls remain, contained in a small network of streets between Mansfield Road and Woodborough Road, the two main arteries into the city center. Whenever the boundaries of this patch start to sprawl, spilling glassy eyed waifs with needle-tracks and bones for limbs onto the more visible main roads, targeted policing forces them back into the darkened estate and councillors can breathe easy again. The arrangement seems to work for almost everybody.

Over time the houses have been split into bedsits and flats, the area becoming increasingly populated by the girls and those who live off them, along with immigrants and students drawn by the cheap rents. At some point a bright spark had the idea to house recently released former prisoners here too, since the area was already synonymous with crime any re-offenders could pass relatively unnoticed amongst the other detritus. Pimps deal drugs to their girls and the punters, recruiting the desperate from the ranks of the students and immigrants to join the others selling their souls for a few dirty notes at a time. Occasionally the girls rob the men who pay to rape them or stab the pimps who beat them, and some of the punters prefer not to pay at all; but by and large these incidents go unreported, the police and the respectable residents of the city are short on sympathy for junkie whores and kerb-crawling perverts.

I am left alone here, just another misfit amongst many, I don't wish to know these people and they have no desire to know me, the arrangement suits everybody just fine. Tonight the air carries the lingering scent of lawns cut earlier in the day and the occasional spicy green aroma of a different grass wafting from an open doorway, a weird mix of the twin normality's that co-exist here. Ghost, my three year old Weimaraner pads along at the side of me, claws clacking on the street surface, slowing his pace slightly whenever he feels tension in the lead. I stop to let him sniff the blackened base of a gate post, which he splashes briefly with a message of his own. The night is alive with the sounds of the street life; loud patois voices arguing in an upstairs flat, the rasp and flare of a match lighting a cigarette down an alley, and the ugly symphony of grunts and half-hearted moans from a parked car. 

I moved here two years ago, uncomfortable with having lived in more pleasant parts of town where the people made unwanted and unwelcome attempts to be neighborly by injecting themselves into my life. On my first walk around the new area I was confronted by a glassy eyed, mixed race man. Skinny and much shorter than my six foot three inch frame, but compensating for it with the Stanley knife he clutched in a twitching hand. His movements were staccato, wracked with the agitation of the hopelessly addicted in need of an immediate fix, and the sight of a strange, lone young male, wearing eyeliner and nail polish and dressed in black, carried the promise of an easy rob. I kept the knife blade and threaded it onto the silver crucifix neck-chain that I sometimes wear; the agitated addict – Marvin is his name I later learned – still stalks the same roads, but he crosses both himself and the street when he sees me coming now. I got Ghost soon after as a further deterrent in case it was needed, but either the grape-vine spreads news fast or people have become accustomed to my presence, and there have been no other such incidents.

Ghost stiffens, a ridge of coarse hair rising along the length of his spine, the tatty looking feline crossing our path freezes momentarily, eyes ablaze, then scurries away underneath a parked car. I crouch down and smooth his hackles back down, soothing him with low words. He rewards me with an enthusiastic wet tongue in the ear, excitable as ever like the rest of his breed. I named him after the visionary singer in Poppy Z Brites' novel Lost Souls, one of the few books to move me to tears; and was later delighted to discover that Weimaraners were in fact known as ghost-dogs by American hunters seeing them for the first time outside of Germany. They are hunting dogs, approximately the same size and shape as Dobermans, with silver-grey fur and piercing blue or amber eyes; bred for hunting deer and boar, they stalk their prey in eerie silence.

Home is a worn three-story Victorian building, entered through a heavy side door which leads directly up to the top floor flat. The flat is high-ceilinged with elaborate cornices and thick decorative dado rails throughout; there are polished wooden floors even in the ample bathroom, which has a deep slipper bath that grips the timber with clawed lion's feet. I open the large fridge freezer and start to assemble the components for dinner, plump blue-gray tiger prawns, crisp spring onions and bean sprouts, a small bitter head of chicory, fragrant coriander, red Thai shallots and fiery chillies. Closing the fridge I open up the larder, selecting coconut cream, fish sauce, soy sauce and good oil, before remembering the caster sugar, garlic and limes.

My expertise with a pestle and mortar is born of considerable practice with Asian cuisine, and the red curry paste base for the laksa quickly takes shape, added to the pan with the coconut cream to infuse for a couple of minutes before the prawns go in. Cooking has long been a passion of mine, the creative process absorbing me completely; I cook every day and always in the same near meditative state. I take advantage of the brief respite to pour myself a couple of fingers of Ardbeg, the peatiest of the Islay single malts and for my money the best, adding a cold splash of water and flicking on some music. Back to the food now, I slice the vegetables to the metronymic beats of Nine Inch Nails, making short precise work of the task. I handle knives with deft precision; let's just say we have a history. Finally, I cook off some flat rice noodles in the spicy soup, switching off the heat when they soften adding the chopped vegetables and a dash of each of the condiments, and serving the pungently fragrant meal in a deep bowl.

Trent Reznor sadly observes that
it's not as much fun to pick up the pieces
, the track ending and making way for the softer orchestral sounds of A Perfect Circle. I open the French doors that lead from the kitchen onto a modest roof terrace; billowing steam hurries out with me, rushing upwards chasing the stars. In other parts of the city I would not be able to afford the square footage and character that is mine here, stifled by modern cubes. I need space like the skeletal figurines on the black streets below need their fix. Food always tastes better out in the open, the fresh air releasing the subtle complex combinations of flavors, the distant city lights like floating lanterns on a crow black ocean.

I flick through my phone between messy mouthfuls, there are three new messages, unusual on most days, but expected tonight. There's a midnight screening of Nosferatu at the Broadway in Hockley, followed by another closed doors event after hours at the Old Angel, referred to affectionately by one and all as the 'Old Anal' by virtue of the fact that it is a bit of a shit hole. I've seen the old black and white movie before, sitting quietly in the darkened art house cinema with an eclectic mix of strangers; some stranger than others, and smiling at the melodramatic music and the exaggerated facial contortions of the actor on screen. I enjoyed the picture as much for the reminder of a past more innocent age as for the subject matter itself. It often seems to me that the 'progress' that marks the advancement of time brings change but very little of it for the better. Tonight the film is an aperitif, merely an excuse to get together rather than the main event though.

Somewhere nearby a police siren wails its two mournful notes, and down below a young black girl runs past sobbing loudly with sandaled feet slap-slapping the pavement, an unseen voice passes inaudible comment and laughs before dissolving into a fit of hacking coughs. A glance at the kitchen clock tells me that it's eleven, time to start getting ready. I quickly rinse off the plate and cutlery before slotting them into the dishwasher; tidiness is the only identifiable character trait of my mother's that I
possess. Ghost is snoring loudly in his fleece-lined basket, lying on his back with all four paws in the air; a loose jowl covering one eye.

“
Daft hound.” He stirs at the sound of my voice and I crouch to stroke him, rolling him back into his sleeping position and kissing the top of his muzzle.

I retire to the bedroom and change into black leather trousers that are laced at the sides along the length of each leg, and a tight black
short-sleeved top with embossed red flames on each arm. I put on the silver neck chain with the crucifix and razor blade pendants and slip them out of sight inside my collar, then lace up my black Nu-rock boots with the three silver buckles up the front, retrieving a small leather pouch from the bedside drawer and slipping it into my trouser pocket.  

Outside again now, the streets are growing quieter; Thursday nights tail off much earlier than the chaotic weekends, and the loudest noise is from my clumping footfalls. The boots have thick soles that elevate me by a couple of inches, Goth attire is great for the short but at six foot three it's not a problem that I have. The orange lights stretch out a monstrous shadow with elongated stilt legs and claws for hands, which seems to circle me as I move.

A purple BMW with heavily tinted windows is parked up ahead, lights off and engine still running with one of the girls leaning down to the window talking to the occupants. The conversation stops as the sound of my steps reaches them. I continue past without slowing, feeling their eyes and glancing across but careful not to stare, since I know precisely who the men in the distinctive car are, everybody around here does. I have a brief impression of them both sitting relaxed in the dark interior; the one with the long dread-locks is Levi 'Evil' Bennett, the other larger man has a cane-row hairstyle and wears white contact lenses with small cats-eye pupils, Bennett's enforcer Antony 'Arachnid' Jones. Jolly pirate nicknames, childish even, and novelty lenses should be laughable outside of a horror movie, but rest assured that nobody around here is laughing.

It is the fashion amongst the warring drug gangs in Nottingham to import Jamaican men for 'hits'; serious men from Kingston with dead eyes and sing-song accents, who suffer no pangs of conscience when lodging a bullet in a spinal cord or a machete in an exposed neck. Many marry the 'SNAF' single mums on the estates, with cash changing hands to allow them to stay in the country. SNAF is the unofficial police term for the human trash that they consider to be below the rest of society, it stands for Sub-Normal Antisocial Fuckers. Bennett and Jones had arrived and been permitted to stay in just this way, and soon found that the skills they had acquired in the hellish Caribbean slums were easily transferable to this new land.

It took them six bloody months to establish this prime territory as their own, during which time Nottingham vied for the dubious distinction of murder capital of Europe.

I exhale, realizing that I had been holding my breath when I passed, nervous, although they have no earthly reason to know who I am, or to take an interest in what I do. I feel the tension begin to drain as I put more distance between me and the idling car; the two killers fading like specters from the dark road in front of my eyes. Levi Evil, without fear or mercy if you believe the stories, a businessman prepared to do whatever it takes to protect and expand his gutter empire. Arachnid Jones with his flat full of spiders and scorpions; a dangerous man with an obsession for things that kill and consume, I wonder whether he is cognitive enough to recognize the irony.

Woodborough Road is silent now, a lone street-walker sits on a crumbling wall with an unlit cigarette between her lips, patting down her jacket pockets for a light and coming up empty.

“
Hey there darlin', you got a light?”

I retrieve a lighter from my pocket and pass it to her, she cups her hands around the flame and smoke starts to billow, escaping from between her fingers.

“
A little late to be out walking all alone, you looking for some company sugar?”