For Your Pleasure Tonight: Chapter 2

Chapter: 2

The reinforced electric powered 4x4 heavily swayed from left to right with every turn it made, like some silent black beast stalking through its urban jungle. Sean noted the increasing lack of cars and people in and around the streets. The fear and reality of the crumbling capital had taken hold of its residents and with every car bombing or bankrupt business within the city’s walls, the grip seemed to tighten. Eventually those who could find employment in another city or country would have no choice but to do so. Then whose shoulders will the politicians and the rich stand on to keep their shoes clean? Sean wondered.

The drive across Leicester Square was eerily silent as the once crowded touristic and commercial center now barely whispered of any activity. The ex-soldier reminded himself of the one positive in all this. Traffic, or rather the lack of it, allowed for a smooth drive from his apartment to the garage.Smooth is fast. The corners of Sean’s lips raised slightly as he remembered the U.S. Marine counterpart he shared a fox hole with for six months and how the Yank never missed an opportunity to repeat that same mantra over and over again whenever he reloaded his rifle. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Sean once jokingly asked if the marine said the same thing whenever he was inside his wife. The American soldier wasn’t amused. That was to be a long six months.

The powerful yet equally silent Rover came to pause at an intersection of bleeding red traffic lights. The unnatural silence of the night began to grate on Sean’s nerves, he opted to flip on the the car radio. He had no predisposition as to what blared out of the speakers and cut through the hushed evening air, just as long as it wasn’t another political rhetoric on how everything was just “fine” within the wall. Things weren’t fine. Things were teetering in a way that filled Sean’s war calloused heart with the darkened rage of betrayal, the kind that made him wonder what he’d even fought for, what he’d seen others his age and younger die for in the scarlet soaked sands of the desert’s battlefields. Was this really to be a good soldier's welcome? A dying city, where it’s children were either forgotten or expelled into the ravenous wild of the ungoverned ghettos and refugee camps beyond the city’s newly raised limits?

The scramble of static and muffled metallic voices filled the once silent cockpit of the militarised vehicle. After a few twists of the radio’s station selector resulted in nothing more than soulless rapidfire adverts of vapid products and their unsubtle subtext promises of fulfilment, Sean frustratingly jabbed at the radio’s scan button, not wishing to endure any more noise in his search for some melodic sounds. The scan’s random selection came to a halt on a nostalgic countdown of celebrated songs originally released in the wake of the early 2000’s. Recognising a few of the fading bars and choruses from his, then still, innocent youth and noticing the traffic lights had now blossomed into a luminescent green bouquet, the ex-soldier chose to give the selection a chance as he put his foot to the gas.

Sean, however, was not prepared for what came next. The cacophony of an obnoxiously jovial DJ’s voice colliding over the final beats of a song that, until the rude interruption, Sean was almost enjoying, did nothing to warn him of the emotional avalanche that came as the next song in the nostalgic playlist began to play. Any thoughts of the night ahead were immediately suffocated by once familiar and romantic lyrics.

Like a siren’s call to the past and against Sean’s better judgement, he allowed the song’s lyrics to seep under his skin as he began to feel his thoughts gravitate to a time in memory that until this very moment he’d been sure to have forgotten.

It had been twelve years ago. She was called Belle and she lived up to her name. Two deep ocean blue eyes nestled comfortably at the the center of the soft cream coloured canvas that was her face. Bridging her delicate eyelashes that never closed, but rather fluttered, a light pink constellation of sun kissed freckles serving as the top of a loveable small celestial nose. Beneath that adorable sniffer, two blush coloured flower petals gently overlapped one another to form an eternally desirable rose of a mouth accompanied by two seed sized dimples at each corner. Even her ears were reminiscent of miraculously curved seashells that defied nature’s boundaries in beauty. Her rosy cheeked face, framed by thick long wavy strands of raven hair, rested atop a slender stem like neck. Sean had the privilege of calling her by a nickname; “Tink”. A privilege she extended to no other, it was his ode to her sweet mischievous nature coupled with a magical ability to make Sean’s heart feel like it could soar whenever they came together. At barely eighteen years of age, their minds and bodies still pulsed with the boundless vitality of carefree hopes and dreams; the kind only afforded by the young. They would walk together with fingers tenderly interlocked, under the nameless trees in Hyde Park. Just a short walk from the neighbouring Soho flats they'd both been born and raised in. Their parents had been good neighbours to one another, often taking care of each other's child while mothers and fathers went out in search of an income opportunity. Many birthdays and play dates were shared.

It was often said in jest that Sean and Belle were star crossed lovers. Neither of the two ever protested this affirmation, only ever making efforts to mask their smiles in blushing embarrassment of the sheer contentment they felt in each other's company. Lounging in the shades of ancient trees on the rolling beds of manicured grass, Sean and Belle would listen to the radio on their pocket sized music player with nothing but two headphones between them. Sharing everything including arms and legs as impromptu headrests in the soft orange glow of the dwindling afternoon light. They were each other’s first and as far as either knew, they would gladly and blissfully be each other’s last. Sometimes the couple would catch themselves inadvertently playing house with Sean's younger, eight year old brother, Benjamine. It was only ever a fleeting glimpse of a tender future, manifesting in shop windows and passing buses as they traversed across the busy traffic flow of London's streets. But still, the brief reflections of Sean and Belle holding hands with a bouncing infant between them as they walked towards the park or Benji's primary school never ceased to spark a smile on Sean's face and a warmth in his heart. The harsh realities of life had yet to blemish their naive smiles. Peripheral headlines of government plans to possibly construct a wall around the city and the looming threat of some war in some far away land, fell on deafeningly content ears and love blind eyes...

But that was a long time ago. Sean scornfully wiped away the single solitary tear that, against the ex-soldiers wishes, had made a daring run for freedom from it's emotionally desolate prison. The ex-soldier flicked off the radio, angrily condemning the entire indulgence as stupid and pointless. The inside of the car once again fell into silence and so, as if to somehow vent the heavy mist of melancholy that now seemed to fill the air, Sean rolled down the driver’s side window a sliver. With one confident hand on the steadied steering wheel and two eyes that never left the road ahead, he activated the 4x4’s built in cigarette lighter and blindly fished into his inner left breast pocket pulling out a battered tin cigarette case. Opening it in his lap and releasing one of his pre-rolled rollies without so much as a downward glance, he brought the cigarette to his lips and as if on cue, the electric lighter saluted at attention with a soft click. By the third inhale of smouldering tobacco, Sean had left his thoughts of the past where they belonged and now once more turned his attention to the night that lay ahead.

An orange strobe of passing street lamps followed by a few more standstills at all but deserted intersections and before long he was turning the hulking electric car into the Major’s garage. Sean had arrived at his destination.