It is agreed
The wrap I ordered from the shop arrives splattered over the inside of the bag. Chicken, cheese and bacon cling to the paper lining.
Photographs of rural fields and farmers are on the walls. Above the coffee machine is a picture of a man leaning against an antique tractor. An angry expression is on his face, although whether this is directed at the camera, or the person behind it is unclear.
Behind the counter is a girl with dyed hair and a lip ring. She takes a carton of milk and pours it into a metal jug. I’m standing by the counter. The barista turns to me.
‘Is it warm enough?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But…’
The girl scratches the unpierced half of her nose. The piercing, silver and thin, is reminiscent of a wedding band.
‘I can heat it up again if it isn’t.’
She doesn’t sound pleased. The queue of people in front of the register seems to writhe in silent displeasure. I can feel their eyes on my back. I shake my head.
‘No. It’s fine. Thanks.’
I leave.
Out on the high street, I unwrap the wrap and take slow, methodical bites. Looking inside, I see everything is orange. The cheese, the chicken, the bacon. It’s BBQ sauce. Or it’s supposed to be. This is what they call ‘processed food.’
I walk along the main street. The town I live in is your standard Northern English town, which means nobody under 35 is here by choice. It’s made of grey concrete and white stone. Pigeons are frequent. Buses are not. 24-hour supermarkets, designer clothing stores, grey skies and rain.
I walk past a row of traffic moving like the greasy end of a snail, inhaling fumes. I make eye-contact with one of the drivers. We both turn away. There’s too many people and none of them want to know me. Even the pigeons are threatening war.
Once, I saw a rat running through the local supermarket. In the ice cream isle. He was brown, and the lino floor didn’t squeak under his paws. He had vacant eyes. Without acknowledging me, he shot under the shelves and was gone.
One of these days, this whole place will be gone too - by nukes, or the rising sea levels, or aliens - and nobody, not even the historians, will have it in their heads to care.
Red-bricked terraces houses, grey pavement, black tar road. The cars aren’t expensive. Wilting plants in wicker baskets. Polite neighbors. Bronze numbers glued to front-doors. Plastic bins wheeled out for collection. Sometimes foxes get in them. You wake up to find the bags split down the middle, last night’s dinner staring up at you.
It’s a state of living Stacy once referred to as ‘red brick terror.’ I think this is as good a name for it as anything else.
I walk to my house. Balancing my wrap in one hand, I take my keys out. The metal is cool in my palm as I unlock the door.
Inside, the smell of musk. The lights are on. I take off my shoes. A single drop of orange sauce stains the carpet. Half the wrap is left. I walk into the kitchen.
Stacy is there. She’s washing up. Our sink is small, in front of a slim window that reveals our garden. Stacy is wearing a jumper her mother got her for Christmas and jeans. Soap suds are on her hands. She wears a yellow apron. From a portable speaker loud music is playing.
‘I went to that new coffee place.’ I say. I put the wrap in the fridge for later. We don’t have a lot in- a stick of something pale that might be butter or cheese or lard, and a jar of mayonnaise.
‘The Hatch?’ Stacy asks.
‘I don’t know. I think so. I can’t remember what it was called, but the girl behind the counter was rude.’
This is half-true. Worse than a full lie or a full truth. I was planning to embellish my story, making her the employee who demanded I leave, who insisted I was holding the line up in my pursuit of minimum-wage justice, but I can see from the sharp hunch of Stacy’s shoulders that it is not wise.
I stand beside her. A plastic cup bobs in the sink. I take it out and hold it. The soap suds slide down the handle.
‘How is he?’ I ask.
She bites her lip.
‘Should I see him?’
‘You’re getting soap on the floor,’ Stacy says.
I look. Soap suds are, indeed, on the floor.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
I get a towel and wipe the floor, before unfolding another to dry the cup. Stacy uses too much washing-up liquid. I’ve told her before. She never listens. I open a cupboard.
We have a glorious collection of novelty mugs. The one I have just dried is shaped like a golf ball. Initially, it came with a teaspoon shaped like a golf club, but in the years since purchase this has become lost. Before closing the cupboard door, I take a teabag from the cardboard box and pocket it.
The tea towel is in my hands like a pageboy’s cap. I resist the urge to wring it. Stacy is staring out the window. Our garden is a concrete cube. I can see a burst football, and a plastic plant I bought to compensate for all the real ones I’d killed.
‘ I bought him a book,’ I say.
‘Which one?’
‘Thaddius Rook and the Cauldron of Light. It’s a kid’s series. A Harry Potter rip-off, I think. It was fifty pence in the charity shop,’ I hesitate. ‘I know it’s not what he likes to read, but the only other books were for really young kids, or non-fiction, and that was the only one that was—’
‘Okay. Fine.’ Stacy inhales sharply.
For a few seconds there is only the fading warmth of late afternoon rays through the window, the dust motes spiraling in the air. The sound of breathing. Rising and falling. Flesh. Through the speaker, the lead singer’s voice is tinny. I set the towel down and pick up the teabag.
‘He’s upstairs. You can visit him.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But not for long. He likes to sleep. I think it’s good for him, to sleep.’
‘Yes. Of course.’
Stacy looks at me. I can’t meet her gaze. I leave the room, and begin to make my way upstairs. Half-way up the stairs I stop. I take the teabag and place it in my palm. Then I rip it in half. Tea leaves cascade onto the stairs like black snow.
Upstairs had always been the most interesting part of the house. We have two bedrooms, the bathroom, and the attic, which is home to nothing except the spiders.
His room is bigger than ours. I suppose that’s bad parenting, but the truth is neither Stacy or I need much room, and we’re both tidy people, so we thought, what’s the harm? He likes to read, he needs space for his books. If he wants a friend round he can have a sleepover. What’s the harm?
In my back pocket the children’s paperback carries no real weight. My socks are silent on the carpet. If I move slowly enough, I carry no real weight. It’s a comforting feeling.
His door is white. His name is imprinted on a clay tablet, a relic from primary school. The S has been carved backwards.
I knock.
I call his name.
I stand slightly pigeon-toed, feeling foolish. I take the paperback from my back pocket. I look at the cover.
A boy stands over a large cauldron, wand in hand. He’s blonde and blue-eyed, young and heroic. Always handsome, I suppose, because nobody wants to read about an ugly hero. There’s a dragon winding its way down the spine, breathing fire over the blurb. I can’t work out what the plot is. I’m not sure reading it would make it any clearer. I hope he likes it.
I can’t remember the last time I read a book. I’m addicted to my phone. It helps. I find the white light soothing. Yesterday, it told me my weekly screen time was down 15% from last week, to an average of 7 hours and 48 minutes a day. I don’t think progress is the right word, but it’s something.
The door, when I open it, squeaks. Suddenly I’m thinking about the brown rat again. The artificial frost, the lights reflected on the lino. How confident the rat was. How purposeful, in that, even if it had no idea where it was headed, it had the courage to pretend it did.
My brain is rebelling against my skull. The curtains are drawn. The light is off. The air smells stale. It takes a few moments for my eyes to adjust.
The carpet is old. The walls are covered in blu-tack and sellotape. He used to have posters up. Bands he liked, or festival leaflets, sometimes novel front-covers. In the early days, he asked me to take them down.
Luckily, his bookshelves are still here. The shelves we bought from IKEA still stand, the books he cultivated so carefully indistinguishable in the dark.
His bed is unmade, a tangle of sheets. His phone lies on his dresser. It’s a dark, silent stone. A layer of dust is on the screen. I take another step.
‘It’s me,’ I say. ‘I’ve brought a book.’
A low groan from the bed.
‘I don’t know if you’ll like it. You don’t have to read it.’
Another groan. He moves, taking the duvet with him, and I see his skin is pale. He wears a pair of pajamas bottoms. They have penguins on them. His chest is bare. He moves like a wounded animal. I’m still holding the paperback. I clear my throat.
‘I can read it to you, if you’d like?’
He coughs. It’s a wet sound.
‘Maybe later, then.’
I examine the names on a stack of books. Nothing I recognize, not that that means much. I’ve never liked reading, even in school. Don’t have the patience for it. Stacy’s not one for reading either. I’ve always wondered where he got the need from.
Next to his bed is a dresser. It’s brown. On top, is a bookmark, a plastic figurine, and a glass of water. I place the paperback next to the figurine. It’s a soldier, plastic rifle aimed at nothing. The IV bag next to the bed drips steadily. The machine whirrs and flickers menacingly. They offered to bring a hospital bed here but I refused. His own bed was fine. There’s a bandage on his arm where they drew blood. It’s a shade lighter than his skin. He whimpers softly. Why did I let him buy those pajamas? They make him look so young.
I stand next to him. They asked if we can give him the care he needed. We said we could.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell him.
With my sleeve I clean the dust from his phone. Opening the paperback, I place the bookmark at Chapter One. I go to the bathroom and re-fill the cup. I pat him on the forehead again.
'It’s all going to be okay,’ I say. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
He doesn’t say anything.
In the evening I put the wrap in the microwave. Within thirty seconds, it’s done. I take it out and put it on a plate.
I eat on my lap in the living room. There’s something on TV. I think it’s a movie, or the news, or a movie about the news. It’s getting harder to tell. The wrap is worse than I remember.
As I’m eating the final bite Stacy comes and sits with me. This is unusual. We have taken to eating our meals separately in the last few months. It’s OK. I can forgive her. This is a very trying time for our family.
‘You’re still eating that?’ Stacy says.
She examines what is left of the wrap - the burnt shell, the orange filling, a piece of cheese hanging like a flag of surrender.
‘It’s an acquired taste,’ I sniff. I take another bite. It tastes of chemicals.
‘We need to talk,’ Stacy says.
She takes a sofa cushion and holds it to her chest. I put the television on mute. It is a short conversation. She’s afraid. She has a solution. There’s a hospital, she tells me, that’s more equipped to deal with this than we are. It hasn’t been easy for her to reach this conclusion. It's a few miles away. We could visit. They can give him a better quality of life, before…
‘Before what?’ I say. I’m surprised by how steady my voice is.
My hands clench. There’s a low hum in my head. We talk until we are shouting.
I don’t remember exactly what happens next. But there’s a chair on the floor, lying at an angle. It’s left a mark on the floor where I threw it. A blonde skid mark. I would like to ask my son if this is an acceptable description, like the kind you might find in a book, but I can’t. Stacy is watching me. Her chest is rising and falling. Her face is a blotchy red colour.
‘I’m going into the garden.’ I tell her. She says nothing, so I go.
There’s a pair of green wellies by the door that I use for gardening. I put these on. I’m sitting by my plant. I touch one of the waxen leaves. It’s true gardening becomes an easy job when your only plant is plastic.
It’s cold. The coolness of the concrete seeps through my jeans. Then, from under the fence, it wriggles. Brown fur. Black eyes. A tail the colour of dust. Dust is made primarily of meteorite pieces and dead skin. It’s an unfortunate reminder that anything can be ground down to nothing.
The rat scurries into the center of our garden. It sniffs, and its head twitches. We lock eyes. Neither of us move. Above, the dark grey clouds seem to still. Cars still move outside. Shops are still open. Traffic lights still changing.
On the main road a car backfires. The rat startles. It ducks under our neighbour’s fence and is gone.
Photographs of rural fields and farmers are on the walls. Above the coffee machine is a picture of a man leaning against an antique tractor. An angry expression is on his face, although whether this is directed at the camera, or the person behind it is unclear.
Behind the counter is a girl with dyed hair and a lip ring. She takes a carton of milk and pours it into a metal jug. I’m standing by the counter. The barista turns to me.
‘Is it warm enough?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But…’
The girl scratches the unpierced half of her nose. The piercing, silver and thin, is reminiscent of a wedding band.
‘I can heat it up again if it isn’t.’
She doesn’t sound pleased. The queue of people in front of the register seems to writhe in silent displeasure. I can feel their eyes on my back. I shake my head.
‘No. It’s fine. Thanks.’
I leave.
Out on the high street, I unwrap the wrap and take slow, methodical bites. Looking inside, I see everything is orange. The cheese, the chicken, the bacon. It’s BBQ sauce. Or it’s supposed to be. This is what they call ‘processed food.’
I walk along the main street. The town I live in is your standard Northern English town, which means nobody under 35 is here by choice. It’s made of grey concrete and white stone. Pigeons are frequent. Buses are not. 24-hour supermarkets, designer clothing stores, grey skies and rain.
I walk past a row of traffic moving like the greasy end of a snail, inhaling fumes. I make eye-contact with one of the drivers. We both turn away. There’s too many people and none of them want to know me. Even the pigeons are threatening war.
Once, I saw a rat running through the local supermarket. In the ice cream isle. He was brown, and the lino floor didn’t squeak under his paws. He had vacant eyes. Without acknowledging me, he shot under the shelves and was gone.
One of these days, this whole place will be gone too - by nukes, or the rising sea levels, or aliens - and nobody, not even the historians, will have it in their heads to care.
Red-bricked terraces houses, grey pavement, black tar road. The cars aren’t expensive. Wilting plants in wicker baskets. Polite neighbors. Bronze numbers glued to front-doors. Plastic bins wheeled out for collection. Sometimes foxes get in them. You wake up to find the bags split down the middle, last night’s dinner staring up at you.
It’s a state of living Stacy once referred to as ‘red brick terror.’ I think this is as good a name for it as anything else.
I walk to my house. Balancing my wrap in one hand, I take my keys out. The metal is cool in my palm as I unlock the door.
Inside, the smell of musk. The lights are on. I take off my shoes. A single drop of orange sauce stains the carpet. Half the wrap is left. I walk into the kitchen.
Stacy is there. She’s washing up. Our sink is small, in front of a slim window that reveals our garden. Stacy is wearing a jumper her mother got her for Christmas and jeans. Soap suds are on her hands. She wears a yellow apron. From a portable speaker loud music is playing.
‘I went to that new coffee place.’ I say. I put the wrap in the fridge for later. We don’t have a lot in- a stick of something pale that might be butter or cheese or lard, and a jar of mayonnaise.
‘The Hatch?’ Stacy asks.
‘I don’t know. I think so. I can’t remember what it was called, but the girl behind the counter was rude.’
This is half-true. Worse than a full lie or a full truth. I was planning to embellish my story, making her the employee who demanded I leave, who insisted I was holding the line up in my pursuit of minimum-wage justice, but I can see from the sharp hunch of Stacy’s shoulders that it is not wise.
I stand beside her. A plastic cup bobs in the sink. I take it out and hold it. The soap suds slide down the handle.
‘How is he?’ I ask.
She bites her lip.
‘Should I see him?’
‘You’re getting soap on the floor,’ Stacy says.
I look. Soap suds are, indeed, on the floor.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
I get a towel and wipe the floor, before unfolding another to dry the cup. Stacy uses too much washing-up liquid. I’ve told her before. She never listens. I open a cupboard.
We have a glorious collection of novelty mugs. The one I have just dried is shaped like a golf ball. Initially, it came with a teaspoon shaped like a golf club, but in the years since purchase this has become lost. Before closing the cupboard door, I take a teabag from the cardboard box and pocket it.
The tea towel is in my hands like a pageboy’s cap. I resist the urge to wring it. Stacy is staring out the window. Our garden is a concrete cube. I can see a burst football, and a plastic plant I bought to compensate for all the real ones I’d killed.
‘ I bought him a book,’ I say.
‘Which one?’
‘Thaddius Rook and the Cauldron of Light. It’s a kid’s series. A Harry Potter rip-off, I think. It was fifty pence in the charity shop,’ I hesitate. ‘I know it’s not what he likes to read, but the only other books were for really young kids, or non-fiction, and that was the only one that was—’
‘Okay. Fine.’ Stacy inhales sharply.
For a few seconds there is only the fading warmth of late afternoon rays through the window, the dust motes spiraling in the air. The sound of breathing. Rising and falling. Flesh. Through the speaker, the lead singer’s voice is tinny. I set the towel down and pick up the teabag.
‘He’s upstairs. You can visit him.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But not for long. He likes to sleep. I think it’s good for him, to sleep.’
‘Yes. Of course.’
Stacy looks at me. I can’t meet her gaze. I leave the room, and begin to make my way upstairs. Half-way up the stairs I stop. I take the teabag and place it in my palm. Then I rip it in half. Tea leaves cascade onto the stairs like black snow.
Upstairs had always been the most interesting part of the house. We have two bedrooms, the bathroom, and the attic, which is home to nothing except the spiders.
His room is bigger than ours. I suppose that’s bad parenting, but the truth is neither Stacy or I need much room, and we’re both tidy people, so we thought, what’s the harm? He likes to read, he needs space for his books. If he wants a friend round he can have a sleepover. What’s the harm?
In my back pocket the children’s paperback carries no real weight. My socks are silent on the carpet. If I move slowly enough, I carry no real weight. It’s a comforting feeling.
His door is white. His name is imprinted on a clay tablet, a relic from primary school. The S has been carved backwards.
I knock.
I call his name.
I stand slightly pigeon-toed, feeling foolish. I take the paperback from my back pocket. I look at the cover.
A boy stands over a large cauldron, wand in hand. He’s blonde and blue-eyed, young and heroic. Always handsome, I suppose, because nobody wants to read about an ugly hero. There’s a dragon winding its way down the spine, breathing fire over the blurb. I can’t work out what the plot is. I’m not sure reading it would make it any clearer. I hope he likes it.
I can’t remember the last time I read a book. I’m addicted to my phone. It helps. I find the white light soothing. Yesterday, it told me my weekly screen time was down 15% from last week, to an average of 7 hours and 48 minutes a day. I don’t think progress is the right word, but it’s something.
The door, when I open it, squeaks. Suddenly I’m thinking about the brown rat again. The artificial frost, the lights reflected on the lino. How confident the rat was. How purposeful, in that, even if it had no idea where it was headed, it had the courage to pretend it did.
My brain is rebelling against my skull. The curtains are drawn. The light is off. The air smells stale. It takes a few moments for my eyes to adjust.
The carpet is old. The walls are covered in blu-tack and sellotape. He used to have posters up. Bands he liked, or festival leaflets, sometimes novel front-covers. In the early days, he asked me to take them down.
Luckily, his bookshelves are still here. The shelves we bought from IKEA still stand, the books he cultivated so carefully indistinguishable in the dark.
His bed is unmade, a tangle of sheets. His phone lies on his dresser. It’s a dark, silent stone. A layer of dust is on the screen. I take another step.
‘It’s me,’ I say. ‘I’ve brought a book.’
A low groan from the bed.
‘I don’t know if you’ll like it. You don’t have to read it.’
Another groan. He moves, taking the duvet with him, and I see his skin is pale. He wears a pair of pajamas bottoms. They have penguins on them. His chest is bare. He moves like a wounded animal. I’m still holding the paperback. I clear my throat.
‘I can read it to you, if you’d like?’
He coughs. It’s a wet sound.
‘Maybe later, then.’
I examine the names on a stack of books. Nothing I recognize, not that that means much. I’ve never liked reading, even in school. Don’t have the patience for it. Stacy’s not one for reading either. I’ve always wondered where he got the need from.
Next to his bed is a dresser. It’s brown. On top, is a bookmark, a plastic figurine, and a glass of water. I place the paperback next to the figurine. It’s a soldier, plastic rifle aimed at nothing. The IV bag next to the bed drips steadily. The machine whirrs and flickers menacingly. They offered to bring a hospital bed here but I refused. His own bed was fine. There’s a bandage on his arm where they drew blood. It’s a shade lighter than his skin. He whimpers softly. Why did I let him buy those pajamas? They make him look so young.
I stand next to him. They asked if we can give him the care he needed. We said we could.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell him.
With my sleeve I clean the dust from his phone. Opening the paperback, I place the bookmark at Chapter One. I go to the bathroom and re-fill the cup. I pat him on the forehead again.
'It’s all going to be okay,’ I say. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
He doesn’t say anything.
In the evening I put the wrap in the microwave. Within thirty seconds, it’s done. I take it out and put it on a plate.
I eat on my lap in the living room. There’s something on TV. I think it’s a movie, or the news, or a movie about the news. It’s getting harder to tell. The wrap is worse than I remember.
As I’m eating the final bite Stacy comes and sits with me. This is unusual. We have taken to eating our meals separately in the last few months. It’s OK. I can forgive her. This is a very trying time for our family.
‘You’re still eating that?’ Stacy says.
She examines what is left of the wrap - the burnt shell, the orange filling, a piece of cheese hanging like a flag of surrender.
‘It’s an acquired taste,’ I sniff. I take another bite. It tastes of chemicals.
‘We need to talk,’ Stacy says.
She takes a sofa cushion and holds it to her chest. I put the television on mute. It is a short conversation. She’s afraid. She has a solution. There’s a hospital, she tells me, that’s more equipped to deal with this than we are. It hasn’t been easy for her to reach this conclusion. It's a few miles away. We could visit. They can give him a better quality of life, before…
‘Before what?’ I say. I’m surprised by how steady my voice is.
My hands clench. There’s a low hum in my head. We talk until we are shouting.
I don’t remember exactly what happens next. But there’s a chair on the floor, lying at an angle. It’s left a mark on the floor where I threw it. A blonde skid mark. I would like to ask my son if this is an acceptable description, like the kind you might find in a book, but I can’t. Stacy is watching me. Her chest is rising and falling. Her face is a blotchy red colour.
‘I’m going into the garden.’ I tell her. She says nothing, so I go.
There’s a pair of green wellies by the door that I use for gardening. I put these on. I’m sitting by my plant. I touch one of the waxen leaves. It’s true gardening becomes an easy job when your only plant is plastic.
It’s cold. The coolness of the concrete seeps through my jeans. Then, from under the fence, it wriggles. Brown fur. Black eyes. A tail the colour of dust. Dust is made primarily of meteorite pieces and dead skin. It’s an unfortunate reminder that anything can be ground down to nothing.
The rat scurries into the center of our garden. It sniffs, and its head twitches. We lock eyes. Neither of us move. Above, the dark grey clouds seem to still. Cars still move outside. Shops are still open. Traffic lights still changing.
On the main road a car backfires. The rat startles. It ducks under our neighbour’s fence and is gone.
Sarah Hall-Murphy is a writer from the North of England. She has work published in BRAG Magazine, MMU Poetry Society Anthology, Cathartic Literary Magazine, Interstellar Lit, Streetcake Magazine, Aah Magazine, and the Paper Crane Outstanding Young Writers Anthology.