Dirty Car Seats
The man whistled at the woman as she sat behind the mesh fence. Her cigarette dropped into the ashtray with a short tap, and she raised her middle finger at him - but the man had already turned away. She held up her hand regardless, directing her thoughts into the back of his head, shielded by a bright orange jacket.
A bus drove by, droning on the tarmac, the side plastered with an exaggerated smiling advertisement for another movie that she couldn’t afford to see. The plastic of her chair creaked dangerously beneath her as she crossed her legs, with her leggings providing little protection against the freezing November air.
Looking over at her neglected cigarette, she decided to take a last drag of it, savouring the bitter taste in the back of her throat before grinding it out. She exhaled slowly, catching just a glimpse of her breath lighting up in the wind before the grey of the nicotine-filled smoke enveloped it. She stood up, the wedges of her boots impaling themselves an inch into the damp grass below. The smoke had dissipated, but the smell would still linger, stuck to her hair - it always lingered, seemingly for days on end, even weeks, a thick cloud that would suffocate her when she lay awake in the night, just staring at the ceiling, permeating her pillow.
She needed to dye her hair soon, the brown roots were seeping through into the blonde too much. She wouldn’t bleach them completely. She liked some to stay. And it always made her seem more authentic to them. They’d imagine looking down on the top of her head, in their dirty car seats, the brown roots sprawled between their knees. She’d never let them get anywhere near that, of course. She slowly trudged over to the caravan’s steps, hearing the faint jingle of her keys elude her as she shuffled around the contents of her bag along the way. Her hands, stiffened from the cold, stung for it.
The caravan’s door was pushed open with a barely audible whine, but present nonetheless. It reminded her of a sick dog. The rasp of scraping boots on her doormat was muffled by a sharp gust of wind whipping her from behind, through into the empty container she called a home, shaking tissues off her cabinet with its invisible hands. She just stared in quiet exasperation as they all went fluttering to the ground. The wind stopped, grasping instead at any residual heat, and pulled it out as it left. She would clean it up later. She’d need to clean those boots later too, she thought to herself, or they could stain, and she had to look less dirty - not clean - but more approachable.
The latch was closed. Inside, there should have been a reprieve from the cold, but there was barely a reprieve from the wind, whose greedy fingers were still able to snake through cracks and holes. She’d have to pay the landlord even more this month if ’her heating problems were proving simply too difficult of a task for her to effectively resolve by herself ’. That’s what they said last time, looking down their noses through thickly-rimmed glasses as their jowls bounced at her. They looked like they wanted her to freeze so that they wouldn’t have to pay for any repairs, that they wanted her to then melt away, open up a spot for someone else, wash into a gutter and rid the caravan site of her scum. She decided to spend the rest of her evening under the covers.
She’d sleep on what she imagined had once been a spotless mattress, but even when she found it, it was bad. The carpeting around it, stained with dots of wine and grease from old celebrations. And breakdowns. Discarded clothing strewn over the top of it all, a multitude of colours slowly turning beige. She stepped her way through it all, gingerly, and sat down on her bed with a creak. Single-sized, not double. Usually, she’s out at this time, working, but tonight she felt much safer indoors. It’s cold at this time anyway. Usually, it doesn’t stop her, but last night she felt a danger, suddenly, as she was leaning against the brick wall.
She was right in the middle of an alleyway, faintly illuminated by somebody above her who should have turned their bedroom light off long ago. There isn’t a way to explain how exactly she knew. Her radar just sent her danger, as if a bright red sign had flashed up for a second over her eyes, a warning. The shock kicked in an irresponsible instinct. Run. Scream even. Take off your heel and use it as a knife. Something else told her to be careful. Turn back, keep breathing, in and out. She felt there was nothing left to breathe, the icy air seeming to barely fill her lungs as they felt constricted. Nothing happened that night. There was no loud crack of a gunshot, her body hitting the ground, a dropped knife, muttered speech behind her. But she knew she had avoided something.
She’d always had a proclivity to enter unfortunate situations where she ended up as a victim. There was an old photograph of her - from years ago now, next to her on her bedside table. She hadn’t had it framed yet, the printout lay lifeless on the wood, only kept still by a dusty mirror placed over it. “Katy Waters” was scribbled on it in red pen. Looking at it always gave her a strange feeling. She longed to go back to those times, but she still wouldn’t know how to escape it, there seemed to be no way out. If you could be transported back in time, you’d change something. But everything was so uncontrollable, even in hindsight.
It was a school photograph, how she was before all the tears, before the years had flown by. Only six years ago, aged just seventeen, was that photograph taken. Her twenty-fourth year would be in a few months. Everything then was so insignificant, like worlds apart. She looked at it each day. A tinge of brightness came from the photograph when she caught a glance of it - a caring and idealistic girl, still within her. The harsh world had scratched her for those last six years, biting. But it had not penetrated the skin, and she would never let it come inside. That didn’t make it stop.
She turned over, bunching the covers into her. A sigh, and then she fell asleep. Dreaming would take her away, for a moment.
