3. Blue String

3. Blue String

Life’s a bitch. This was something it had taken most of Michael’s adolescence to learn. People, naturally, were horrible - it didn’t take him many years of life to understand this concept. But the idea that Life itself, the whole great machine that controls every penny you find on the street and every whisper in the ear of a schizo, that Life was one enormous vengeful cow with a serious grudge - that was something Michael had learned through bitter experience.

Take school, as but one example. The fact that the toilet should have been clogged up by its previous mystery occupant, leaving no one to blame but Michael, earning him the nickname Mikey Poos-a-lot for the rest of Year 1. Or moving up to secondary school and a tiny mistake leaving him with an extra ‘a’ at the end of his name on the school register, much to the amusement of everyone else. How about GCSE classes? Every single class was inhabited by Grant Everson, David Britton or Tom Sweeny, or a combination of the three.

English classes were particularly unpleasant. Life had blessed all three with a talent for writing, and so they were all grouped together. Anytime the teacher was late, the trio would gather around Michael’s desk, sometimes bending over crudely and smirking ‘bet you want some of this?’, other times inventing as many synonyms as possible for the word ‘queer’ (it being an English class, they were particularly inventive. A+ for originality). And then Life’s piece de resistance, sending the same trio to the same sixth form college as Michael. That was a particularly low blow from Life. At sixth form, you are supposed to be able to make a new start, reinvent yourself. This was not easy with the English trio catcalling down corridors, breaking open lockers and drawing crude graffiti. So well done Life! Check mate to you.

This is why, walking back up Burton Street, Michael was not so much disappointed as completely unsurprised. Life wasn’t going to give up without a fight, not when there were so many more traumas to inflict on him. The fun had barely started. There were years of depression, bitterness and misfortunes still to come, and Michael simply did not want to experience them. A less sympathetic person might have told him ‘the hard times are what build character’ or ‘make you a stronger person’. Well Michael had had his share of hard times, thank you very much, and he was neither strong nor brimming with ‘character’.

Sylvie Bolton glanced at the dark lad sloping back past her café window. Her gaze followed him, so physically transformed from a few minutes ago, causing her to butter both sides of a slice of bread. She frowned, thought to herself ‘that boy needs a good shafting, that’ll set him right’, then began piercing a packet of Lincolnshire sausages.

What exactly was Michael supposed to do with all this excess time, stretching out into infinity? Go back home? The prospect appealed to him as much as a slaughterhouse would appeal to a vegetarian. Home was not a happy place. Go ‘out’? No, the music was too loud, the people too pissed. The was always the park. He could sleep like a hobo on the bench next to the swings. With luck, hypothermia would set in and he could drift off and never wake up.

This was Michael’s plan of action as he trudged back along the route he came, this time feeling much heavier. And then something caught his eye. A violet neon light flickered on the wall in one of the alleyways to his left, one of those fly zappers Michael had never seen work. But it wasn’t the light which caught his attention, rather the scaffolding next to it, from which hung a dangling piece of electric-blue nylon string. It was as though a giant flashing arrow was pointing to the string and saying ‘Death: this way!’. So he followed the arrow.

The string itself, weathered and frayed, was attached to one of the metal poles overhead. It dangled languidly in the cold air. Michael climbed up onto one of the old metal dustbins underneath, and grasped at it. The plastic felt smooth in the way that only manufactured things can. He checked its length, then began tying it into a loop with a loose knot. His nimble fingers, numbing to the cold, nevertheless worked diligently at the material, and he silently thanked all those long hours he had spent tying the knots on the back of his art coursework (a beautiful textile piece which Tom Sweeny had accidentally knocked a pot of black ink onto). He held the loop up for inspection, and was just as proud as he had been of the artwork. Then he gave the string a hard tug, making sure it was secure, before slipping the hoodie from his head and slipping the noose around his throat.

Michael inhaled. Then he dug his heel into the bin below, and pushed it forward.

The noise of the steel dustbin clanging onto concrete must have been considerable, and several of the occupants in nearby houses must have looked quizzically into the air, before, hearing nothing else, returning to whatever it is they were doing. Strangely, Michael heard nothing. It may seem an obvious thing to anticipate, but nothing quite prepared him for the shock of not being able to breathe. The string dug bitterly above his Adam’s apple. What felt so smooth before now felt rough and calloused as it scratched harshly into his neck like a scouring pad.

Against his own wishes, human survival instinct began to kick in. His fingers grasped around his neck, struggling unsuccessfully to get between the noose and his airway. Stars began to sparkle in front of his eyes, like when you stand up too quickly, followed by the same sense of light-headedness. But more than anything, panic. The blind sort of panic that you get when your head is stuck in a t-shirt with a neck hole that’s too small, or when that snotty-nosed boy at school threw a worm at you. That ‘I will do anything to get out of this situation’ sort of Life preservation. And so Michael struggled, his toes just a few tantalising inches from the ground, wriggling like a worm on a hook.

The next sensation he felt was dull knock to his knees, followed quickly by a scraping on his palms. Air rushed into his stinging lungs, only to be coughed and spluttered back out. He was vaguely aware of being back on the icy ground, next to the overturned bin. His fingers prised away at nylon around his neck, pulling it back from the raw skin underneath. He didn’t yet have the strength to pull it off, so it hung there, a perverse necklace. He concentrated on trying to breathe without throwing up. Eventually, once the stars had started to dissolve from his vision, Michael brought himself to look up.

There, standing five feet in front of him, with his arms crossed and that same amused expression, was that boy again. The purple neon flashed on a bright pair of eyes. His blond hair didn’t match the dark eyebrows that arched up in the middle or the dark sideburns that crept to the bottom of his jaw. Michael rubbed his eyes. The stranger offered his hand.

“Looks like the rope wasn’t strong enough.”

2. The Lonliest Place

2. The Lonliest Place

There were few things Gabriel Evans had control over in his life. He didn’t control the bills and taxes that bled him dry every month. He didn’t control his family, on the rare occasions he saw them. He didn’t control the fact that he had no foreseeable future, other than a soul destroying repetition of the present. So, he worked on the things he could control: he dyed his hair blond, painted over the cracks in his bed-sit and manipulated men into buying the drinks he couldn’t afford. And now, as a final attempt at asserting control on life, he was going to choose how and when he was going to die: tonight, at Jumper’s Hump.

Gabriel didn’t live all that far from the Hump (unlike Michael, who had to trek from the ‘nice end’ of town), so he was always one of the first to know when there had been a fresh ‘jumper’. Making his way down Clarkson Avenue, he took out a cigarette - something else he didn’t have control over - and strolled nihilistically to his destiny. There was no spring in his step. For Gabriel, this was not a glorious moment of triumph, but more akin to watching a film, realising you don’t like it, and turning the television off. Never really knowing what happens at the end, but without the curiosity to care.

Turning onto Freedom Road, Gabriel saw the carnival of the police barricade and groaned to himself. Someone else got here first. How’s that for control? Well, if he was going to drag himself out on a freezing night like this, he reasoned he may as well get the inside scoop on the details. So he walked to the other side of the street - still within earshot of the Father Christmas-like officer - hoisted himself onto the bonnet of a green (or blue? The light made it hard to tell) Citroen, stuck his hands into the warm creases of his zip-up and continued to suck in the warm smoke, swinging his legs off the edge.

“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m afraid the bridge will be closed off for the rest of the night,” announced the policeman, who seemed to be rather enjoying his roll as envoy to the people.

The small crowd, none of whom were inconvenienced in the slightest, let out a collective grumble.

“Paramedics are on hand, and divers are on their way. We are doing everything in our power to retrieve the victim from the water,” PC Ho-Ho-Ho announced. Behind him, a group of his colleagues were standing in a circle sharing a hot drink from a flask. As they drank, clinging onto the polystyrene cups like precious stones, the steam rose in white billows up to their smiling faces.

“Did you see who it was?” asked one member of the crowd, a burley man in his fifties. The others muttered in assent. This is what they really wanted to know, the juicy details.

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we can’t disclose details at this time,” the officer recited, sounding genuinely regretful.

“I saw it.” Like the Red Sea, the gathering parted and hushed around a little old woman, puffed up with as many layers as she could wear, a thick pair of glasses distorting her eyes into those of a Roswell alien.

Gabriel was not in the least bit surprised. In his experience, whenever someone else was having a bad day it was the little old ladies who turned up first, watching like vultures circle dying animals. The first time he was ever attacked it was in front of a tenement block with 300 lace curtains pulled slightly open, and 300 pairs of elderly female eyes watching.

“I saw what happened,” the extra-terrestrial little woman repeated. Everyone, including the police officer, listened intently. “It was a woman on the bridge. She looked foreign, one of them Islams I think.”

There was a murmur among the rabble, a collective ‘oh that explains it’.

“She couldna been very old, didn’t look more ‘n twenty. Course, she had one o’ them headscarves on, so it was hard to tell, what with my eyesight,” she continued, her voluminous eyes downcast. “She stood on the edge, up there, climbed over the railing. She just stood there for a good quarter of an hour, looking down at the river. Then she just jumped. That’s when I called the police.”

The others murmured at how she had done the right thing, and began recounting their own stories about jumpers, borrowed from a friend of a friend who was there. The conversations were filled with ‘oh dear’s and ‘such a shame’s, but the people were more animated than they had been all evening.

Gabriel smiled bitterly to himself, thinking of the poor bitch who had ruined his plans for the evening. He wondered if he had beaten her to it, would the crowd be talking about him instead? Probably. The same mantras of ‘such a waste’ mumbled again and again, heads down and shaking side to side. He sucked the last life out of his cigarette and spat the glowing stub down to the pavement.

That was when he noticed the other boy, apart from the crowd. All in black (Halloween’s over mate) and a jet bit of fringe coming out from under his hood. He was tall, slender, with pale cheeks bitten red by the cold. Call it suicidal intuition, but Gabriel recognised the way he was looking past the barricade, up at the top where dying flowers lay all year round. Looks like someone else had missed the bus tonight.

Gabriel watched him and made the same assessment he automatically made of any male that passed his way: Was he doable? In this case, probably. Minus points for the emo thing, but not bad all in all. As he was contemplating the second question however (how much?), he noticed the other boy had begun to slope off, back down Burton Street. Purely on instinct and curiosity, Gabriel slid off the car bonnet - knocking into the wing mirror so it pointed up at the moon - and began to follow this other lost soul for no other reason than because he had so much time and nothing else worthwhile to do with it.

1. Jumper's Hump

1. Jumper's Hump

The river Great Onsford snakes it’s way across three hundred and fifty miles of English countryside before it reaches the town of Brentwich, by which time it has gorged itself on several tributaries and has become quite torpid, no longer the fresh young stream of its youth, but a fat sludgy mass. In response to this quite unflattering visitor, Brentwich turns its back, growing and evolving away from the river, distancing itself as a teenager will their own parent so that the river flows only through the old industrial district, well away from trendy nightclubs and chestnut-lined avenues. To be fair, it’s not as though Brentwich has many of these - you far more likely to find an avenue lined with broken televisions and stained mattresses than you are one with chestnut trees - but the thought was there. Really, the river was much better left out of sight. The floating shopping trolleys only served to remind the inhabitants that theirs was a town with a great deal of rubbish. Not that it was only rubbish which could be found floating on the slimy surface. There were far less pleasant things to find.

There was only one main bridge which united the two halves of Brentwich’s industrial sector. This link curved up at the river’s widest point to a height of forty metres above the Great Onsford’s high tide, spanning over two hundred metres, a grand achievement of Brunel’s Britain. It was given the grotesquely absurd name of Freedom Bridge. Far more common among the local populace, however, was its affectionate nickname - Jumper’s Hump.

If you wanted to kill yourself in Brentwich (and chances are, if you lived in the town long enough, you probably would at some point) then Jumper’s Hump was simply the most fashionable way to go. In the past year alone, there had been twenty two jumps from the bridge, seventeen of which were ‘successful’. The most likely cause of death was internal bleeding - ribs shattering upon impact and piercing multiple internal organs. Drowning was secondary. Of those unfortunates who were unsuccessful , nearly all were shown to have smashed ankles and femurs, taking months of healing and rehabilitation to learn how to walk again (“Yes Mr Enslow, you can have another go at the Hump, but first we’ve got to practice our exercises, now haven’t we?”).

There were seasonal changes, of course. Summer was comparatively suicide-free. There was even a tally kept by locals as to how many days in a row Jumper’s Hump had gone without a jumper - ‘85 DAYS - NEW RECORD’. February was peak time, the seasonal equivalent of a bad hangover. Christmas was also especially prominent. There’s nothing like the festive spirit to drive someone over the edge.

And so it was on this night, at 10.04pm on Saturday the 23rd of December, that eighteen year-old Michael Clements arrived at the corner off Jumper’s Hump with the single, clear purpose of plunging himself into the blackness and ending his life.

The yellow-lit streets glowed with a crystalline sharpness Michael had never noticed before. He didn’t walk - he floated, just as he soon would along the river. What a wonderful feeling: for once to have a purpose; for once to walk out the front door of his family’s home and know he would never come back; for once to have somewhere he was supposed to be. He trembled with the anticipation. Michael Clements was going places - possibly all the way to the harbour.

In preparation for this momentous evening, Michael had actually taken care with his appearance, bathing himself with the same reverie in which a Muslim washes before prayer. He let the water turn cold, closed his eyes and slipped under the surface, pretending it was the Great Onsford and smiling at the safe, womb-like feel. Only his mother’s banging at the door - “Michael, hurry yourself up, Parkie’s on soon! Whatever are you doing in there?!” - forced him to wrench himself out like a newborn and take the first aching gasp. He fingered his black hair into place, put on his favourite black t-shirt and black jeans, and zipped up his best black hoodie. A dark priest.

“You going out somewhere?” Mother called, craning her head from watching Parkinson, her tone more surprised than questioning.

Michael nodded.

“Oh. Well, don’t be out too late, alright?”

Michael opened the door.

“Michael? Enjoy yourself.”

Michael closed the door behind him.

And now, as he walked/floated along Burton Street, for the first time in a long time Michael really was enjoying himself. Indeed, there was even a barely perceptible spring in his step, and an almost-smile kept twitching at the corners of his mouth which every now and again he gave into under the disguise of chewing his fingernails.

Working at her late-night café and half-way through pouring a cup of tea, Sylvie Bolton noticed with some amusement the black-clad youth bouncing past her window. She smiled to herself, Bet he just lost his cherry, then went back to milk and two sugars.

She was wrong, of course, but then Michael couldn’t have been more giddy as he neared the corner to Freedom Road than if he had lost his cherry, and the excitement was building up as he got nearer to the bridge. It was as though he had finally been dealt the card he wanted, ‘Go straight to the Bridge, do not pass Go, do not collect £200’. Just one more corner….

The first thing he noticed were the blue lights pulsing out at the yellow darkness. The second thing was the fluorescent yellow tape stretched across the road. The third was the small crowd gathering around the policeman at the front. Michael’s heart sank. Even though he knew life had thwarted him again, the message hadn’t reached his legs yet, which kept on going towards the barrier where the jolly policeman was explaining the situation (gossip) to the concerned (nosey) gathering.

Apart from Michael, only one other person stood apart, sucking on the stub of a cigarette and sitting on the bonnet of a car parked on the other side of the road, his silently amused face flashing yellow and blue.