Here's Living and dying in Pete's - part 15 -the final part (although there may be a wee epilogue). If you haven't read recent parts, then you really should before reading this one. All previous parts are listed below. Hope you all 'like' the ending - let me know your thoughts - one and all please.
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Gravel, all of it the same grey, clings itself at the curb edges. Smaller grains shake as the ramshackle tram clunks its metal by, making those who are talking talk louder or stop to resume their conversation when it passes. Stubs of grass, losing the battle against the pounded, flat dirt, braze in the sun. Tower blocks thumped against the skyline careen for miles in all directions. One building in the distance is magnified by its closer neighbour, ad infinitum, until they are right up next to you. Endless buildings streaked in dozens of greys lime-greys, torrid greys, pained greys, downright dumb greys. Windows, scattered down the buildings, caked in the smut of car-puke, remote curtains lurk behind them, some of them open to let in the spew, most of them shut with their equal floor-plans behind them.
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Derek, his body slumped from his hair down, sits on the stone steps of the hospital. He swings his neck back and takes a stiff breath - the kind which bulges the eyeballs. The concrete sky, the fucking infected sky brings it out of him. He looks to his north - far as he can, the furthest tower block. His eyes sweep back and back, counting off the blocks as they get closer. All of them washing the sky in their colour. All these windows, all these slabs, vertical, horizontal. He edges his seat round, scans the hospital building. It looks the same too. This whole fucking area - this huge throng of living - built on a million perversions of the same colour. This insane maze where nothing is different - the squalor of the communist hangover. Then he lets out a laugh, a lung-smashing laugh.
'Pyotr. Pyotr. You fucking bastard! You fucking bastard! I have no idea where I am.'
He scans again and again. Each time he stretches his eyeballs the view amalgamates more and more. Finally he looks down. He closes his eyes. And, even within his eyelids the same indestructible, ruthless grey stares back at him.
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He's probably glanced at this window, with this room behind it. His retina must have flown across it, blurred into the others. He'll never find it. Not in the mass.
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Behind the window a kitchen, stacked with the same bits and pieces as all the other kitchens - not a wall can be touched with the fridge, cooker, sink and table tucked tight in there. The simple table with its bumpy, checked tablecloth in bright red and white squares, is covered: dark purple, fat-pocked salami wrapped in good brown paper, lurid green pickles - wet and pungent, a small bowl of glistening, orange-red caviar and shanks of numerous breads.
'What the fuck was that shit you gave me this time?'
'Yeah - did the trick though Pyotr. It gives a good colour effect. That black, bilious colour is a great convincer Pyotr.'
'Mikhail - I thought it was really killing me at some points! Hey - what the fuck anyway. Have you got the wad?'
Mikhail slaps the neat block of hundred dollars on the kitchen table. A grin as wide as the notes swells across his face.
'Here it is. Lovely isn't it?'
'It is. Now give me my three-point-five and you keep the one point five. That should leave you quite a lot after your expenses.'
'Thanks Pyotr - when we doing the next one?'
Pyotr chomps a pickle in half - clacking, vigorous chews accompany his reply:
'Mikhail - I'm not going soft, but I need a break. It's hard fucking work all this living and dying you know. One day, one of them will find us. Not this American, bum-fucked zero, but one of them will - one day. Anyway, it takes it out of me. You try drinking some of that shit you give me and chucking up black shit for a couple of weeks. Nah - the next one won't be so soon.'
'Okay, okay. But, it wears off quick. You're already pretty tip-top, no?'
Pyotr swaps the remaining half-pickle in his hand and picks up a chunk of firm bread. He waves it in his hands as he continues:
'Mikhail - my gorgeous doctor friend. Were both prostitutes in this - I do the sex, because I can do that shit with any kind of creature. A cock full of thunder, remember? You do the acting and getting the pills. We work together well - always.'
'So - I mean physically. How you feeling?'
Pyotr leans to Mikhail and downs an earnest intake of air.
'This may sound like madness, but it's how I feel. I feel like I'm standing on top of the world. Extending my limbs outwards, and light is exploding from my extremities, Massive amounts of light - so fucking bright there is no night anymore. And all the world can see me. But, it doesn't matter, because I'm fucking invincible, untouchable.'
Pyotr roars out a friend's laugh - the kind only close friends could tolerate. The force of it so strong it dries the excited spittle on his bottom lip.
'And, Mikhail. I have thousands of dollars in my pocket. Sure we'll work together again soon. I'll fucking die again soon. Dying is too fucking good to me.'
There is silence for a second or two and then the twist of metal teeth on a vodka bottle opening with the glasses clinking ends it.
'Let's drink!'
