Axolotl Park (a short story)
I know I said I was holding off on fiction until I had a whole new season, but I've prepared this one for a Halloween themed competition. Although its turned out more psychedelic than spooky.
They used to call Kirsty’s mum a witch.
Kids. Harmless teasing until it’s not.
Kirsty is hardly a friend to her own cause though. All her talk of visions, spells, curses…and that bottled up temper of hers…
She had school shooter energy before that was even a concept. God, don’t tell anyone I said that out loud.
I used to visit her in the shelter before she started to get really bad. Now I have to track her down fresh, every week. This rinse and repeat “adventure” has acquainted me with the types of people who make you want to scrub your fingernails raw after speaking with them. Hogan Shank, Fitzroy McCusker, names that suggest a comic colour, neither of these lowlifes have been capable of in years. No, these two—and soon to be Kirsty if she doesn’t get back on track—had their last flickers of real personality snuffed out after their ninth needle behind the knee.
I spot her distinct shape outside the Co-Op this morning. Hunched over crossed legs. She tilts and bobs, some combo of raver/monk. Her grime encased hair flies forward off her shoulders with each head banging thrust.
I’ve got to admit, the dimple framed smile she throws me as I enter the outer limits of her movement-triggered visual field, is infectious. Forget that thing I said about school shooter energy. We must be catching her at the high end of her cycle.
Far from the fright/anger response that you’d assume her rhino style disability might cause in the girl, she treats the hazy shapes coming her way like some type of lucky dip. Will this be a friend or a threat? Who knows until they get too close to react!
Studying her shining eyes, as she steals her own lifeforce from the days to come. Burning through the last of her youth at triple speed. Taking it in advance, all at once. I can’t help but assume, days like this—days where she’s managed to cop—must bring her a higher strike rate on the pan handling front. Metalhead joy. She’s enjoying a party no one else is experiencing.
Any affection this spurs in me is undercut however, by the reminder that even this rare silver lining within the feast/famine cycle will likely only stay with her until the first of those beautiful teeth fall out. After that all she’s got to look forward to is…
“Mitchell!”
“Kirsty, my girl.” I smile as I step around a cardboard sign I mistook for rubbish. “You forgot to check in with me yesterday.”
I glance down at the soggy side of an old box and squint to make out Kirsty’s handwriting.
Luv Poshins 4 Cash.
I raise an eyebrow. “You know, you might have more luck if you write in slightly larger font.
“Font?” Kirsty’s lineless brow shifts as she makes an outsized analysis of this word.
“Do you still have that phone I set you up with?” I move on.
Thrusting a hand inside her biker’s jacket, Kirsty forces me to look away. She’s wearing nothing underneath. By the time I decide it’s safe to return my gaze, she’s shaking the flip-phone above her head.
“I need you to start using that, Kirst. Please check in with me,” I’m careful not to layer on the school-teacher tone too heavily. She doesn’t respond well to it.
Her answer comes in the form of a reshuffling of the cardboard—as if its off-centre positioning is the only barrier between her and an influx of customers! She accompanies this gesture with some low muttering.
“Sorry I didn’t quite catch that that?” I bend down to her level and cup my ear with my hand.
A man emerging from the supermarket with a sports drink throws me an odd look. My response is an eyebrow raise and an unblinking gaze tracking him all the way to his bus stop.
“I said, I was with a client,” repeats Kirsty through gritted teeth, eyes on the ground. A years worth of bubblegum are spotted all the way from her sneakers to the curb.
My heart rate spikes.
She cuts off my worst assumptions with a look of disgust. “Not that type of client, Mitch…” she twists her mouth. “Ewww! No, I’m talkin’ my potions. Miss Tweezle over there in the Bookie.”
I follow her gesture to the Nine Leaf Clover—a store that stands out like a candy wrapper on this street. Colourful lettering, LED embedded logo. I suppose it’s essentially serving the same function as candy around here. Nutrition free indulgence.
I think I know the woman she’s referring to. Not personally, just by name. Aside from the pensioners who religiously hit up “The Clover” to squeeze out the last hits of serotonin that their withered-up brains can produce, Miss Tweezle is the only female who ever ventures into the place. Grossly overweight, I think she’s a widow. Can’t remember the backstory of the husband though. I try to keep the local gossip as far from my day-to-day thoughts as I can.
“Yea well, she had a mad crush on one of them butchers over there. A Turk.”
The gesture is redundant. Mega Butcher is a spot I have frequented more than my fair share. Cheapest lamb this side of the bridge!
“Ok, so what are you saying? She came to you, and what?...” Suddenly an awful thought strikes me. “What did you give her to drink Kirsty?” I can’t keep my breath from quivering as I reexamine the entrance to the Bookie. Despite its colourful exterior, the inside lights are all dimmed. None of the usual street signs are out. I subconsciously rise to my feet and begin tracking my way towards it.
“Not her. Him.” Thrusts Kirsty back towards the butcher.
“How did you…” my heart slows slightly as I clock the hairy man behind the counter. His usual, “Yes please!” greeting—more a statement than a question—thrusts itself into my head without my consent. “How did you convince him to drink anything you concocted?” I say with layers of morbid intrigue in my tone.
“Don’t worry about that part,” she says quickly, before lowering her gaze. “It went bad. I cooked it too strong. He’s turned into a….into a damned psycho for her!”
I re-examine the man in the window. Stoic, until a customer walks in, at which point, his leather features morph into a crow-footed mask of joy. Built from thicker material than anyone in my family. Big lips, big hands, the complete opposite to me. I can’t imagine this man’s heartrate ever spiking higher than a mild flare. Psycho?
“Na honest. That’s why I’ve been out here all week. Had to keep an eye on her every night. Proved myself right when I had to help her escape out the back door of her shop last night. The guy’s cooked in the head!”
I glance down at this girl’s ten-pence sized pupils and nod respectfully. “Alright Kirsty.” I drop a tenner into her upturned hat and pat her on the shoulder. “You call me next week to check in. I can’t be chasing you down every time, ok?”
***
If the news had come from Kirsty, I probably wouldn’t have believed it. The Turk actually did it. He killed her. Miss Tweezle. In broad daylight. And it wasn’t exactly a clean execution. He severed her head. Pasted blood above her doorway and left her decapitated body behind the Bookie’s lit up window, seated as if she were about to have her hair cut. Not a blade of hair to be found on the whole premises mind you.
That was the first time a headline has made me vomit in my life. Not just a dry wretch. I vomited all over the council office’s carpet. Derek, the secretary, throws me a look, like he knows exactly what this is. “No Derek, not all of us finish a litre of Vodka on any given Thursday!” I don’t help my cause by knocking my keys off the desk in a scramble to get myself outside mind you. Clanging when they hit the ground and again when I stumble to pick them up. A hell of a noise
Outside the Co-op, two buskers stand in place of Kirsty. One boy, one girl. Bad folk songs—Bob Dylan mashed with Cardi-B prose. I shift down gear and turn off to Kirsty’s other haunt, Axolotl Park.
Moving to Hackney as twelve-year lad, my biggest disappointment was discovering that there were no actual Axolotls at Axolotl Park. Later I’d find out that I wasn’t so far off the mark after all. There are Axolotls there.
They’re not amphibians though. You can hardly call them human either. Axolotl Park is the place you will find the hardiest of street creatures. Not your garden-variety junkies. These are the lifers, the scarred-up veterans. Most of whom have lost a limb or two and simply regrown them in defiance of nature and society. At least that’s my assumption, based exclusively on how they look.
Kirsty’s there with them. A skink in their world—I guess they make exceptions for females? I guess they were standing still, and far enough away to appear friendly when they initially invited her over?
Today, Kirsty is not at the high end of her cycle. She reacts to me emerging from the haze, as if I’m the reaper himself.
“What do you want? Here to ‘pologise for not believin’ me?”
“No I.” Suddenly I become conscious of all the eyes waiting for me in the trees. It’s not even four pm yet and the light is fading. “No, I’m here to find out what was in that potion of yours’ Kirsty.”
“’That’ll cost you twenty quid brotha—” she smirks before making eyes to one of the salamanders across from her.
“No, I’m serious.” No sooner have I reached out my arm, than I retract it. Realising I’d squeezed her tricep tighter than I had any business doing.
Her eyes linger on the space above her elbow where three pink finger marks take a long time to fade. “That’s prob’ly gonna bruise, y’know?”
“Get outta here stiff,” croaks one of the older—or at least older looking—axolotls. He’s been paused with a half-crunched beer can in hand, lighter in the other for at least two lizard years by this point.
I pull out my wallet and plead. “Kirsty, I’m willing to pay. Councilor/client confidentiality forbids me from telling anyone about this. I just need to place a public disclaimer that this stuff is currently circulating the streets right now.”
“I already told ya—” spits Kirsty between coughs. “T’s safe as chips. I just gave the Turk a strong brew.”
“And what was in that brew?” I pry, extended a fifty.
She takes it without a word, glances to her circle of park dwellers and releases a heavy sigh. “If I tell you that, you know I can never take it back, right?”
I nod.
“And you know what day it is?” she adds.
Day? The evening has well and truly closed in. “Ahhh, October…Oh!...Halloween.” I say with a lift.
“Halloween,” she repeats in a very different tone to mine.
Somehow, beyond all reason, I find myself following Kirsty deeper into Axolotl park than I’ve even been—even in daylight. We leave the axolotls, we leave the dog walking area, past the groomed pathways, past the trimmed brush. Over hedges and under shrubs until we come to a dirt floored corner, consisting of a pink sleeping bag, a plastic sack and a pot boiling over a fire as if prepared in advance by somebody who knew we were coming.
It’s funny, well…not funny, but interesting how easily I’ve forgotten myself now that I’m in Kirsty’s domain. Compared to the axolotls she’s a corporate lawyer, and compared to me, she’s a ten-tour veteran of these parts. I dust off a patch of dry dirt and hug my knees to my chest as I stare into the crackling flames.
She reaches into what I’m choosing to believe is a hidden pocket inside her jacket and emerges with a foil wrapper. Her fingers move with controlled mastery as she unwraps and pours a portion of whatever lies within, into the depths of the pot. Her pupils are pinned. Her expression medical. I watch her jaw ripple as a swell of gruff laughter rises on the other side of the bushel. She maintains discipline, never taking her eyes off the pot, not jerking her pour by even a fraction.
The crackling orange is our only light now. Hypnotic as it licks the pot. Casting Kirsty’s overlong pants in a warm glow.
“Get over here,” she gestures, moving only the lower portion of her fingers, still not turning away from the contents of that pot.
I fight against all the protests my body want me to make. Bristling heckles, tightening scrotum, quivering breath and worst of all, cowering pride. Despite all else: the danger, my concerns for Kirsty, all my knowledge of the vicious drug cycle I’m currently taking part in; incredibly, some schoolboy part of me is afraid to look “uncool” in this context.
Kirsty’s sigh speaks to all my insecurities. “This is the only way to understand it,” she states. Seeing through my professional veneer with witchdoctor clarity.
My feet kick up puffing clouds of dust. I make the gallows walk. My body, seemingly taking offence at my refusal to listen to it’s signals, returns the favour. Moving without consent. A bitter, chemical wall hits my eyes first, before searing my nostrils. I swear, my eyes water so hard that I hear the flames hiss as droplets fall from them. A weight bears down on me as Kirsty throws a sheet over my head. Heavy, polyester of the kind I’ve seen on numerous junk-filled carts, wheeled down the main street by our city’s most reputable. I can’t smell the crusty fabric over the fumes and this a god send.
Next thing I know, I’m meeting God.
Or at least someone from the bible. Pulling me into the depths of the bubbling pot, my soul wrenched out of my body, towards the water. Flying, hurtling.
Boiling, popping bubbles approach. I wince, then suddenly I’m rising up with the smoke. Saved at the final moment, safe from disfigurement. High above my hunched body I rise. Beyond the pot, the trees, Axolotl park, high above the suburb, London, England, the planet, the dimension, and somehow I know my body is safe there beneath Kirsty’s blanket.
“The potion,” whispers Kirsty. Though not the Kirsty I know. This is a version of her I’ve never met before. The one who exists beyond substances, free of street, the damage, the upbringing. Independent of our reality. “The potion was meant to trigger love. It was supposed to let the butcher see Miss Tweezle for her inner beauty, to see her for who she really was.”
What a noble pursuit. Regardless of its truth, the pursuit was pure, I consider. Most junkies I know are driven by greed, the next score, no secondary good. Damned those kids for teasing her. So what if she thinks she’s a witch? If it leads her to believe these beautiful thoughts then why not?
“But I put too much in,” she continues. “I let the butcher see too much. I let him taste her darkness.”
“We’ve all got darkness in us.” I answer on autopilot—social worker 101 kicking in even here in the kaleidoscope realm. “That’s nothing to feel guilty about. And it certainly doesn’t justify what he did to her. We all have just as much good in us.”
“No not her—”
A jolt of panic puts me in touch with the first bodily sensation I’ve felt since I began floating. I’m somewhere in the upper regions of a Picasso-cubist atmosphere, yet when I look down, I can see my body. I can see Kirsty. I can see three axolotls, block style tails and all, belly stalking their way through the bushes.
Initially, I give in to my base instincts. Screaming urgency. I kick my shoes at the yellowish cloud. It disperses into fragmenting pieces, each shattered glasslike shard glowing fluro-blue, green and pink as it spins into eternity. Yet I cannot get back down there.
Why would I want to anyway? I look at the axolotls. Strange tendrils coming off their cheeks like a mane. Cartoonish waddles, goofy yet friendly smiles. Unlike their Salamander kin, axoltls never emerge from the water. They—or some unnamed evolutionary system—choose to remain water bound, like the larval, tadpole versions of their land dwelling cousins. Their existence is a denial of constant progress. Why step into that lower valley? Who wants to be early adopter? Why not stay at this plateau. Who is to say it’s wrong? If we want to spend our days in the park. Wearing a brand of suffering that our “civilized” counterparts could never contemplate for the sake of a daily high. Who is to say this is wrong? Must we take that next step? Place ourselves on the bottom rung. Minimum wage. Small fish, big pond. Why not take medium sized salamander, any pond I like? Maintaining legs should I need to step on land, but never staying there long.
Isn’t there something noble to this lifestyle? Something as noble as Kirsty’s potion?
“She used to do bad things,” Says Kirsty. It takes me a beat to remember she’s talking about Miss Tweezle. I can’t tell if it’s been an hour or mere seconds since she last spoke. “Bad things that the Turk saw. That the Turk judged. That the Turk punished.”
Kirsty’s loud voice turns the heads of the Axoltls. One raises a finger to his lips. Kirsty’s tone seeps into my very soul. I kick some more, trying to get back to some semblance of that judgement free place I was in moments ago. C’mon Mitch. Look at those strange old creatures. Try to finds some beauty in that blotty skin, the gaping mouths, the staggered steps, the sharp teeth.
Now my limbs are heavy. Paralysed. My lungs barely have space to inflate. I grit my teeth. Wanting nothing more than to be back inside my body. Back under that sheet so I can pry my head away, throw of this weight. Throw of these chemicals, spells, whatever the fuck Kirsty the witch is putting me through and get the fuck out of here!
This is when the giggling starts. Right in my ear, even though I feel a million miles away from any living being. It’s joyful, childlike. “You should have believed them!” chuckles Kirsty. Sweet, but not for me. Her laughter is that of a little girl with her friends. Exclusive, pointed. “You should have taken the warnings seriously, Mitch!” The laughter is not for me, but it’s aimed at me. It darkens, matures, cackling rather than giggling now.
I manage enough movement to see the axolotls enter Kirsty’s clearing. Part of me worries for her, but her relaxed body language dispels this worry. They’re here for me.
“Let me down!” I scream, from the land of Ma Jolie.
They don’t let me down. She doesn’t let me down.
I’m forced to watch them. Morphing from lizard to man. They rise, they throw of the sheet. I smell them, cigarettes and hops, but cannot fight them. They smell me, they grab me. Hands that used to be talons pin me down. Kirsty wanders over. Her smiling face is above me, yet somehow I’m still floating above. This reminds me of the drug cycle: high, low, where are we now? Is this a change or have I always been here?
She produces a knife. No you can’t call it that. A machete is what it is. You would think this escalation would be the thing to bring me to the brink. But as I watch her wipe off that chipped blade on her saggy pants, all my muddled brain can come up with is a question. Axoltls have the ability to grow back their limbs. Do I?
