Preamble – writer’s block

The car braked and stopped. The toll booth was closed. Shut up, the attendant had gone away. The barrier arm was locked down. Clamped tight, silently screaming, you can’t go through there, matey. Cars buzzing by flashed on either side. Racing past in blurs of colours, they didn’t have to stop, so why me?

I decided to start at the other end.

The tunnel and the mountain it burrowed under lay behind me, draped in dull grey drab. It was good to avoid the dark, damp tunnel. The sun shone, the sea sparkled, boats bobbed on the harbour like… oh dear, the lights went out. Someone switched them off. Bugger. I sat, frustration dribbling down my legs like a pre-emptive uncontrolled pee (things aren’t going well today).

Go with it.

I was in a mine. The lamp was dead. Men worked ahead of me. I could hear them hammering. Something dropped onto my shoulder—a cave Weta, perhaps. I might be on the West Coast, near Blackball. The surrounding black might be coal. I reached out and touched the seam, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Nothing. Nope, nothing.

A pretty newsreader appears; she’s reading a story I can’t hear.

Imagine, I think, if there was a woman who was in charge of nothingness. It was her job to dole it out. She was responsible for the voids, for the pregnant pauses and brain fades. Perhaps she had slipped me a ticket, a voucher, which needed to be redeemed. I had to use the ticket, return it, or transfer it to some unwitting fool. Perhaps I could throw it away – throw it away in a dump. Drive it to dump out of town and shoot it. Just like Beefy Stevie Thornton did to Muncho!

I got it—I’ve got it. The barrier arm suddenly swung open. The lights turned back on. I looked around; I was on the West Coast but in Hokitika, not Blackball. The seam was gold, not coal. I look up, and Laura Coates smiles back at me.

“Tell the story,” She says. “It needs to be told.” I smile and start writing.

The day I dropped Beefy Stevie Thornton

The kitchen was filled with the smell of mince cooking in a huge pot, nothing unusual for our flat, but tonight, the air was different. The steam carried a whiff of anarchy and pointlessness.

I stood by the stove, cooking, tasting, stirring. A bit of this, a bit of that, plenty of onion, and Wattie’s Tom sauce.

The door creaked open, and my flatmate Beefy Stevie Thornton entered, .22 rifle in hand, bulky and smug. He sat down at the kitchen table with an unsettling calm and a strange look on his face.

Silence hung heavy, then, a question, sharp and cutting, “Where’s Muncho?” I asked.

Beefy Stevie sneered, cold words spilled out, “I took him down to the town dump, used him for target practice.”

I froze, my mind struggling to catch up, as he continued, detached, “The first shot clipped him, he lay there, wondering why he couldn’t move. It took a second shot to end his misery.”

Rage erupted, a punch flew, fast and furious, Stevie hit the ground, the scent of cooking still in the air, bay leaves and pepper. God, I punched him hard. It took all my restraint not to kick him.

Blood and mince mingled; Beefy Stevie Thornton slowly stood, shaking, eyes distant.

“What the fuck?” We both screamed, chests heaving.

What the fuck – indeed.

The flat felt darker and colder; Stevie’s cruelty left scars that would linger and haunt me to this day. Forty years later, my mind still gets lost in memories of Muncho, a small, black-and-white, soft, flat puppy, now gone. What was the purpose of his short life? What would possess a grown man to shoot an innocent puppy, which any child or senior would have loved to have loved?

Muncho’s ghost lingers in the corners, a quiet reminder of what was lost, of justice, meted out in a single blow, but the pain and loss stayed. A dark shadow, a stain on the wallpaper of my life. While I am not a violent man, and I am not proud of my actions, my only regret is that I should have punched Beefy Stevie Thornton harder. Funnily enough, in the forty years since, while I think of Muncho sometimes, I have never given Beefy Stevie Thornton a second thought.

The woman in charge of nothingness smiled. She agreed; that was all Beefy Stevie Thornton was worth. Laura Coates smiled, too, or was that in my imagination?

For Muncho – and little dogs everywhere.

Nb: Names have been changed.