Climb by Cathy Campbell

Climb

by Cathy Campbell

Thirty-one flights turning and turning, each corner a world of its own. The lower are lined with dealers, and whatever you want, you can have. There is smack and whizz, and there is coke and Es – and if you can say it, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Halfway up are the sellers, shades with assorted haberdashery, and bottles of vitamin B – knocked off from Asda. They know who you are, but that is not a problem for them. Say nothing and keep moving along.

Hell should be lower, but it is on level 16. This is the door you should never have entered, the door that disturbs your dreams. It’s the one on the left. No one lives here. Tonight, it is used by the men who run the estate; four of them circled, intent on the cards – they are playing poker. The room is sodden with the stench of beer, and the makings of paradise languidly lie on a table against the window.

Look for Michelle. Someone said she was here. Michelle ma belle, the girl from outside. A girl who had everything; so fine, with her friends and her complacency. Michelle, with her middle class confidence. Why did she come here? She said it was pique. My mother had left and my father remarried, and well … I could not abide the competition. One day, as she walked in town, having spent the last of her cash, a sharp suit with a BMW drew her in, reeled her like a fish. The suit was besotted by this exotic girl from somewhere else – but only for the space of a heart beat. He asked her to show his pals a good time. She refused, of course – at first – but he beguiled, and gave her a little something to take off the edge. It was a bed of nails.

There is movement inside, and a murmur of voices. The men are leaving to go back to their lives, to their women and kids, and their houses in Alderley Edge. They fear nothing, except one another. Do not face them. Stand aside, for no one will help you. Do not look through the door – but you did, didn’t you, all those years ago? The darkness beyond had colours and hues, but, still there was nothing to see. Then a helicopter circled the block, and there, in the flare of a search light, was Michelle. She lay in the corner, a broken doll, hair in her face, and her legs sprawled apart. The tracks of the needle were festered and scabbed, and they whispered, You should have gone home.

 

Cathy Campbell