By Richard Al Ledger

Known him years. Go way back.

Always given him a pass on things I probably shouldn't have. First and foremost, that's on me. Maybe the reason I still do this, to one day have the balls to stand up to him and finally leave his indelible shadow. Punch him in the arm ask him why. Spit on his wife. Let's get one thing straight, I probably wouldn't ever do that.

He's got low morals (one of a toad) and I'd speculate similar IQ. He's an idiot. Many who know him consider him the quintessential bellend, yet via universe alignment I've known him since we were both the tender age of eleven, back when we both joined the big school with a wide eyed innocence and blanket perceptions. We are thus forever bonded by that ensuing fear of newness, thus there is a certain lasting loyalty towards him that only I consider valid. Through rusty chains biting into bleeding wrists, through the unreplied messages with a lump in my throat when his mum had cancer. Everyone else from school jumped off the boat and swam a long time ago — or died through drowning in alcohol and children and ignorance — but I'm still here. His mum ended up dying, too.

He's got this bloated face from years of continental lager abuse and abuse. His eyes set back in to his heavy rounded pinkish features, his hair regrettably thinning from his scalp, receding like our commonality. The bristles around his cheeks and chin like paperclip ends exuding through leathery skin tanned from working outside, almost painful to imagine that shave every day.

We sit and enjoy each others banality. My mind begins to wander to old times, long lost memories I still carry on my back like the backpack from mother adorned with hero turtles filled with paper wrapped books and pencil shavings and crisps he'd steal from me in school. Few moments still leap out when I think about the past; painful thoughts recurring like the smell of sour milk and the taste, thinking back to our thinly veiled friendship, that in inverted commas.

At fourteen in Biology he punched me so hard in the arm I couldn't lift my fork at lunch that day or the next. It didn't hurt exactly, but for two days my arm genuinely died I think. It just gave up working entirely. To this day I've never known anything like it, tried googling symptoms even now but don't get much back only the inevitable suggestion of a cancer. The joint ghosts and the elbow gods fled unmercifully upon impact. Mortal appendage. Limb incommunicado. Dead arm.

At fifteen he cracked a shatter proof ruler across the back of my neck with such force that from then on in my school they were just referred to as rulers. A lasting red band around my nape, a leash to his fear mongering.

At sixteen on the last day of school he decided to wrestle me down to the floor and have his way with me physically (but not sexually, might I add) in front of the whole year until I begged forgiveness over and over again like a helpless new transparent sprogling wrapped in a filthy blanket and left to die at the doorstep of an empty house. To this day i'm still not sure why he did it, in all likelihood it was his last meaningful show of masculine dominance before encountering a real world he already recognised he wouldn't get along with, nor would come to like him - swallow him up wholly.

This one really stuck in my craw, still does deep down in the midnights and the deprecating moments. Years after, even now I still retain graphic visions of plucking his eyes out in a fit of sweet revenge, disconnecting the optic nerve with a swift pull of the chord like a shallow sink plug, throwing his baby blues against the nearest wall, hearing the satisfying splatter of a new blindness. Spitting the greenest, beefiest phlegm wad into his eyehole sockets I can muster, as he screams for forgiveness and mercy touching his bloody voids, then sawing his tongue off with my house key, as long as it took, no rush its been years. Blood backing up into his mouth down the throat without a swallow making him vomit and suffocate and struggle for breath and forgiveness.

Good friends. Go way back.

Small talk dispensed with, a silence ensues above the bandit machine and to fill the awkwardly prolonging void I ask him his opinion about the incoming cold snap. The meteorologists calling it a 'unique weather event', a worldwide crisis will ensue when it eventually hits the capitalist West. A prolonged freeze, strange phenomenon coming up from the south, a unique climate abnormality of relentless ice.

Spain and the surrounding regions experiencing the worst snow storms on record, much of the country coming to an abrupt standstill, a national emergency ensuing. Buildings swarmed with high snow walls and towering ice pyramids, food rationing enforced by an unorganised government, authoritarians splintering in panic, shorelines freezing over prohibiting boats to leave, any planes in or out cancelled - too risky.

He doesn't know anything about it of course for not on his patch yet, deflecting the conversation to the back pages. I pretend to know about the scorelines and the last minute foul and the very good Brazilian. It keeps him talking at least and I do a good enough job of filling in the gaps with comments of Lineker and Gascoigne.

He takes a long swig of his lager, the head still fresh enough to leave a creamy liner on his meaty lip, he wipes with the back of his hand a sound like heavy sandpaper over untreated wood. I contemplate a near future when he buys the next round of drinks and complains about the prices.

All my other more affluent friends think he's a massive cock. Valid, hard to argue even. Maybe an inferior attribute for not having the fortitude to tell him to finally buggar off out of my life once and for all, for the truth is he is a cock really. Something endearing, somehow important to me emotionally however having an old mate you've known for years, to reminisce about the good old days, the days we never get back. Though I do always get the feeling that he perceives his good old days were more important than mine and to be frank, in that regard at least he's probably correct.

But anyway, here we are, sat in the pub – the old mates.

He's got three kids, all horrible toerags with similar foreheads with forgettable three letter nicknames whom sit in front of phones and tablets and screens. The ugly wife with the downturned smile and unoccupied eyes whom he barks at three times a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A noticeable contempt which spills over into hatred lingers between them, its palpable with every word spoken in exchange. His breath remarkable, smells of a dogs arsehole post shit - always somehow has done, this truly is remarkable. It's a reassuring smell at this point in my life - Am I mentally ill? After all this talk of dog I forgot to mention he's also got a dog called Bison. It's a staffy, of course it is.

None of those things are necessarily connected, I just felt you needed in on the fact just how bad his extraordinary breath really is. I could go on a tangent right now about how truly violating his exhaust, but I'll save you the indignation of having to read about it further. But just know it's bad, please.

He works for his brother as a painter and decorator. A word of advice, if you're ever in the Suffolk or the East Anglian region in need of trade, don't hire them - ever. I would never tell him this to his face, especially with rulers abound, but as painters and decorators go, they’re in the upper echelon — the John Wayne and Billy the Kid of the trade, gunslinging brushes instead of six-shooters..

I'm childless, single, and fairly happy with my decisions at this point in my life. That's a lie, I'm not happy about my decisions, but decisions I made and I thus have to live with them otherwise envisions of sticking a chainsaw against my skull and pressing the ON button ensue.

We're sat in my local, not his. I wouldn't be seen dead in his. Also, I think he might be barred from his.

“Let me get you a PINT.” He says to me. “Stop fucking around with that FAGGY BOLLOCKS.”

That faggy bollocks being a small batch 0.5% pale ale from a brewery down in Shoreditch I happen to like.

“I don't drink Phil.” For the last time, Phil.

“FUCKIN' nob.” His immediate reply, his knee rocks in agitation, an exhale adds a fume. “What's the point then?”

The point is I'd like to stay in touch with you as the last real tangible link to my childhood and the pub is the only other existence in your pitiful little universe between home and work you, you wanker.

Good friends.

Eventually it sinks in that he's uttered the words 'faggy bollocks' quite loudly in a rather busy, rather affluent pub. I look around, the side eyes and hushed chatter ensuing around the room towards our table right now I do actually find low key hilarious. Reassuringly for me I know nobody would bother saying anything to him in here, he's too thickset and burly for this hipster crowd. Phil doesn't take the blindest bit of notice. Tact, as you can probably imagine, has never been one of his stronger attributes.

“Come on DICKHEAD have a pint with me!”

I decline.

“WHY NOT!?”

“It doesn't suit me, Phil.” I reply intentionally dryly. We go through this rigmarole every single time.

He hardly hears me.

“You allergic or something?” Like a medical deficiency could the only realistic reason to not drink.

“No it makes me depressed Phil.” It comes out easy. “It makes me depressed and it makes me feel so alone. So alone and darkly, thickset black, a blanket of black falling across my vision and my thoughts connected. I no longer see buildings and trees and people, just textures and hues which represent themselves as feelings, terrible heavy feelings I don't know what to do with, and they stay, and they don't want to leave.”

He doesn't know what to say.

I don't know what to say.

I've never verbalised that out loud before, but it makes so much fucking sense now.

His thick digits curled around the pint glass, rooted squarely on the table. Here it comes.

I bet it's a short sentence with swear word.

“You fucking COCK.”

There it is. He lifts his glass and takes a long gulp of beer, it feels in protest.

We finish our drinks in relative quiet, after deciding mutually not to get another we step outside and exchange pleasantries. We awkwardly shake hands. He's not used to bodily contact, I can tell by his mannerisms and naturally defensive posture, and it suddenly occurs to me he's the first human who's physically touched me in a number of weeks also.

That makes me feel somber for both of us. We were just kids in school, after all, and now we’re not - we’re adults, and I believe I’m still in some form of denial about it. I wish I could have had the foresight to pinpoint when childhood transitioned to manhood so I could have had the chance to acknowledge it more, I guess. He's got his life, his unfortunately foreheaded kids and his unattractive wife. His dog Bison. I have, mine.

He walks towards his van, its old and dirty and worn like us, there's white paint under there somewhere. It has ‘W SH ME’ written on the back doors in finger. Someone had the courtesy to wipe off the letter A for a reason I can't immediately grasp. Knowing where Phil lives, they probably meant to spell it with an O I think to my self laughing internally as Phil starts her up. I win, Phil.

There's a ladder strapped aloft the vehicle with some blue rope.

He drives off, he doesn't look or wave.

I just stand there in the cold.

THE END