Chapter 1
A pair of ex-pampers lay devastated in the road. Splattered and pollocked by some honking hoohah, hoof footing at hyperspeed to nowhere inparticular. Turning Danny’s last eve’s meal - in the process - into some gross, screeching, rebel salute to the down and out mythos of this; the North End drag.
This tattered strip of misshapen bodies and dwellings has never fully shaken off the blanket blitz bombings of 1940. Sure, they rebuilt themselves with their own crude hands, but like discount deities each homestead rose in its own image of distrust and crippled pride. Every visage now stands singular and solitary; expressing its owners swollen contempt. Eyes that never meet, curtains closed tight and the stench of drink; oh the drink.
The endless lines of scowling store fronts and un-homely homes are punctuated alternatively by beer shops and the skyline protruding spires of oft-promised doom and rare sought hope, towering above incisors and molars like long ragged canines, ready when the town bites back to sink in hard first and swallow hole.
With a face etched in time, each crag and empty crevice spelling out another night of loss and heaved stomach lining choruses; Roger Wade, gaped and jawing, hurls a collage of vowels and consonants through teeth boozed to fine points and hazes gaseous, oscillating, in half-hope they’ll coalesce into coherence after leaving his atmosphere, beckoning 20 sticks to burn up swiftly on re-entry; and keep everything at that heightened skew the End calls for.
On some clear days if eyes are set heaven and at the right angle, splintered glimpses of unpolluted light fight sneakily through the atmosphere of stale, past its sell by date community spirit and pub pisscakes,
“Maybe today” Roger chunters out loud at nobody inparticular.
“After all, royalty is on its way”
