Conner

BEEP BEEP

An alarm sounded in the distant haze of wakening.

BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEP.

The ghastly noise began to slur as the drunkenness of the day broke through Conner’s eyelids. He was late. Again.

The alarm was not set to wake him up, but instead to tell him to get a fucking move on because the time was half past seven and within the night he hadn’t gone to heaven. He usually woke up naturally around half past six, providing the beast enough time to yawn and wash and eat and brush and run and catch and sit and compose and think and read and walk and collapse. Except for the past week. For some reason he was sleeping in longer, and he wondered why. The alarm was there for protection, a ‘just-in-case’ desperate measure for the unlikelihood of decaying into desperate times. These were desperate times, and – as usual with desperate times – the desperate measures were never good enough.

Conner reached the train station about quarter past eight, a mere thirty minutes before school registration started, with a forty-five minute train journey ahead of him. He wondered why it took so long, the machine varying different speeds along the way. Surely if the train went as fast as it could, he would arrive at education in no time?

Despite having a name spelt out of pure spite from the detestation of his parents, Conner was not particularly bright. His usual sleep and waking patterns were interrupted because he was ill. Never having been even runny-nosed before, his runny nose – although shocking and terrifically tasty – did not intimidate him. It was just part of growing up, after all. His parents got runny-nosed too, and, just like the viscous milk that would stick his sheets together and stink out his tissue box, the runny nose was a classic symptom of adolescence. As well as the red cough he had started to celebrate with a fresh packet of non-sticky, non-stinky tissues per day. The hoarse voice he rather liked too. Apparently some kind of box had begun to develop in his throat, although he didn’t remember eating any cardboard as of late.

The train arrived after five minutes and Conner snapped out of ruminating over such tedious nonsense as why trains couldn’t reach the speed of light, and graciously swaggered into the back carriage at the far end of the platform: it was a trick his father had taught him, it was always the emptiest. Although Conner didn’t understand why he would want to hide away from people, he followed his father’s advise. He’d learnt that he payed heavily when he didn’t.

Luckily, there was one seat left. A pale-looking boy of grave and timid countenance was sat on the left of the spare seat, and Conner felt a pang of curiosity as he sat down next to the stranger. He didn’t smell, but he certainly looked rather odd. And sad. Conner didn’t understand sad: what was the point in being gloomy if you can just be happy instead?

The boy had a round face, was wearing sunglasses and was unshaven, except for his head. His hands trembled slightly, and not because of the shaking train carriage. He wasn’t in school uniform, but perhaps he was on his way to college instead. Or possibly London. Maybe he was famous! Conner struggled to contain himself, ‘Are you famous!’ he ejaculated, in wont of old.

‘Excuse me?’ muttered the boy, now facing Conner.

‘I notice that you’re not in school uniform and I then decided that you must be on your way to London because famous people live there, like Sherlock Holmes. I like him.’ He did. The boy looked back in amazement at this ridiculous animal before him, and his dying eyes retrieved a tiny bit of life.

‘No, I’m not famous.’

‘Oh.’ Conner felt incredibly disappointed, but tried his best not to show it. ‘I’m incredibly disappointed,’ he said. ‘I always wanted to meet a famous person.’

‘They’re not that great.’ replied the boy sharply, but Conner did not hear this reply because an intense urge to cough revoked his senses. He desperately choked into his pocket for a tissue, and found one with a hole in the middle from the moisture of yesterday’s snot and sneezes. The boy stared at Conner as he brought his rotting tissue up to his face, and coughed like thunder. Blood flew through the hole and straight at the boy.

Conner smiled at him. ‘Whoopsy daisy.’ he said, and scrunched up the tissue, shoved it in the boy’s face frozen in horror, and clumsily wiped around the visually affected areas, adding more invisible matter to his face than it took off.

The boy shut his eyes and stopped his breathing. And then it happened.