Kafka (VERY dark short story) Benedict Brooke

Kafka stood by the door, and smiled listlessly at the small and slightly crumpled cigarette that hung recalcitrantly on the lip of the ashtray. He shifted almost uneasily -as a telephone rang somewhere in the distance. Harsh and loud in the sombre night. He ran his tongue over his slightly cracked lips, not a cheering thought on a night like this. Coming to you like this, in the soft uneasy beat of footfalls and the odd creak of a warning door.

Loth as he was, there were worse crimes. He heard the vile coughing, as it staggered a little on the staircase.  The dull step of worn leather stumbling into a shuffle, and as he pushed himself deeper into the corner he saw the first snatch of patched overcoat. The moon glanced between the clouds and ran grimy fingers over the wall opposite the shattered casement window. The old guy slipped past him and he eased the blade out and upwards, feeling the warm hard impact of flesh and smelling him.  Tobacco, stale urine, and staler gin.  And all of a sudden fresh blood. Then stepping  back he heard the sound of his firmer steps, sliding on the corner of the stop landing, and then felt the fresh air as he broke free onto the shadowed roof... skipping now like a kid in play.  He could hear the metallic chatter of the fire escape, as he hastened onto the slick street where the ugly haze of neon slunk through the puddles, reflected from the brash pink sign of the club opposite.

He headed in a different direction, not where it was dark and might seem easier, but to the main street where taxis danced in the streetlights. He could almost smell their leather as they passed.

They had asked for Harry Martyr, but hadn’t been able to get him.  Not because he was expensive but because he was a Glasgow man and he had his children to think of.  So it was hard to get him to leave the sour redbrick streets of his hometown, where he lived, and knew the memories of his own childhood. He wanted to treat his kids to the same illicit stolen moments of grit and hard words. And he didn’t like to leave them... 

So -not being able to get Harry Martyr, they had got him instead.

Kafka (although his friends called him Michael) was different.  He had been Michael back in the old days, in their earlier lives, before they had found their alter egos.

He knew the man from the shop as Danny.  Danny with the old shabby suits and the hair that shuddered greyly over his brow. The rain had stopped as he met him by the old books that stank as badly as the man’s dirty old overcoat. It was not knowing the reason that did it, he supposed. Anyway, Danny didn’t know but it was now his turn. 

He had said “Kafka, it’s a dirty business and a world that’s full of traps and snares.  So don’t eat with them, even the best of them, or you might find yourself eating shit.”

He got the buff envelope off Danny first.  There was enough blood on the money, without adding his.  And now someone in Whitehall could rest easy.

The thunder irritated him, made his head heavy. The lightning seemed uneasily close to the neon – and he could see the old man’s blood as vividly as he had done before –

When he had opened the mail on that grey depressing morning... he had had an inkling that something was wrong.  The golden daybreaks of his youth had left him, and he would have been easier if he could have seen clearer. The hearse that rolled beneath his window, as he glanced into the street while pouring milk for his breakfast.

But no one saw him, not really.  The true reason why he had no wife.  Not his trade, but the emptiness of his vision.

He didn’t really register, as he walked the imaginary dog in the park, that Lucas was following him.  He knew Lucas as the spare lean guy in the pub, who watched women like a mongrel and wore an old tweed, and soup stains on what passed for a club tie.

Lucas greeted him shyly in the pub that lunchtime.  He laid a hand on his thigh, not looking... As he was prone to do with women and men alike.  Christ but the drink did taste good.  It was only when Lucas smiled like he knew something- that Kafka could see his mistake.

“Never let the bastards buy you a drink, or you might just find yourself drinking shit as well.”

Why hadn’t Danny told him that? As his eyes reached the floor, his body slumped off the barstool.  That was the final thing he thought, as Lucas gave that smile again, the last gasp of faded neon died from his eyes.  He saw the old man’s face, vivid as his blood, in the wild eyed tumbling of the previous night.

He should have known.  After all, he spent long enough looking for his father.