REAP

 ‘‘Care assistant. Care assistant. Care assistant.’

That’s me… sort of.

The old job title echoes around my skull, a reminder of what I’m meant to be, although I confess that only one of those words is appropriate; the truth is I don’t care at all, I don’t give a flying fig and sitting on an overcrowded bus on a wet Monday morning only making the words sound even more preposterous.

This crammed London can has filled up quickly; it always does, not full of people going about their day jobs, nor young ambitious work shy college types on their way to the dole office, no. The bus is full of what I live and breath every single God given day, the elderly, the nearly deceased, the walking dead and ever rotting Bingo queue to the slab. Take a gasp and hold it in, you still can’t escape the smell that festers somewhere deep in their saggy loins, no matter how  much cheap hairspray, cologne or butterscotch hand cream they use, you can never escape it, invisible as it is. It torments me and I, unlike you, am constantly aware of its presence.  What the devil is it with old folk and their obsession with buses? They’d be buried in them if they were only allowed a bigger lot in the earth, sat next to each other in an orderly fashion, free bus pass forever clutched in a rigor mortis grip.

This particular morning the windows are foggy, steamed up, it makes my thoughts about pestilence flow all too readily. There’s a queasiness welling up in my belly from the seafood platter the night before, served up by that odd waiter at La Trumpette, the one with that unrelenting lascivious look in his eye. Bit of a worry. The image of the sodden garlic enthused mussels, it oozes through my minds eye as we pass by the cemetery, God, I’m sick. I rest my head on the window, trying not to think about the legion of germs no doubt stomping across the glass surface, before closing my eyes and trying to shut it all out.

I picture a cluster of black coffins, piled in the back of an imposing dumpster, some of them are emitting dull thuds and muffled screams from the inside. It drives through the night with its monstrous reeking cargo until it reaches the Thames at Canary Wharf. The water bubbles and toils here tonight, mysteriously bought to boiling point, perhaps by the fury that runs through the capital. Under the twinkling lights of the looming office blocks, the yellow behemoth reverses to the edge of the seething maelstrom and sheds it’s load, hydraulics hissing as it tips the dying masses into this simmering pot, their lids slowly creaking open under the temperature until they reveal some clammy shrivelled thing inside, pale, pink and embryonic, wearing nothing but a smile. I picture myself lifting dusty caskets to my mouth one by one and tipping them down my neck, always cautious to avoid the ones that haven’t opened… they’re the ones that’ll make you vom…

The bump in the road jolts me awake, I’m back on the bus. What’s happening to me? I put my head down, I think I’m going to be sick… am sick.

‘’Are you alright dear?’’ says an old lady, placing a putrid, liver spot ridden hand upon me.

I hold my mouth and gip.

‘’Yeah, just don’t touch me alright? Never touch me.’’

She pulls away with a look of surprise. I don’t give a hoot, my hangover has peaked and each passing minute on this journey is a moment in purgatory that I can do without. The turmoil in my head and belly seem to have synchronised now, a steady swirling of troubling corrosion, each potentially lethal in their own way.

“Miss?” says a different creature, male this time, still reeking, still marked with death. A tinny noise comes from behind him, coming at two second intervals. A pinging sound.

 The bus has hissed to a halt at a stop and yet no one is getting off, doors wide open, letting in merciful fresh air. I glance at my hand and am perturbed to find it has wrapped itself around a handrail and is pushing the request stop button in a steady rhythm; only now as I become aware of it, does it subside. Come on Kim, just a bit further.

“Sorry.” I announce to the driver and his shuffling cargo, hate and self loathing united.

Must exert more self control damn it, in more ways than one. That whole business with Mr Browning was tricky, I felt the excuses and the denials flow less easily, residual guilt seeming to shine across my face like a beacon when I spoke to his distraught young son. No more deaths in the bath, especially no more struggles, I must use something even more natural.

 Again I am pulled from a reverie, this time by a more mechanical voice. The female voice of the bus announces coldly;

”Damen Avenue… alight here for Gromley Home for the Elderly.”

Damn you Transport for London. It all sounds so mocking, knowing… disarming. I step out of the sarcastic red box that so reeks of the near death, emerging very briefly into fresh air, gulping it down, savouring it… before heading towards an environment worse than the bus. As I walk towards my own personal gigantic graveyard, one thing ricochets over and over, around my young and seemingly healthy skull…

‘Care assistant. Care assistant. Care assistant.’

For all my strained efforts at restraint and normality, I feel today may see the culmination of this battle, facades will crumble, a purge that will bring me peace.I don’t think I feel sick any more, a malign calm has come upon me. Walking through the old chipped wooden front doors of Gromley, I let myself smile for the first time today as I idly finger my name tag: Kimberly Winters: Manageress.