Hippy
Beneath Charlie’s dreadlocks and tie dye lurked something unusual, though few ever noticed. He
would smile, smoke a joint and mess about, but he spent lots of time alone, rather than with the
others. Sometimes he laughed a bit too hard when someone fell over or broke something.
Whenever he did, a blackness came over his eyes, for whilst he was ostensibly one of them: a free
lover, and a campaigner for peace and tolerance, hatred swam deep in his heart. He knew that he
was rootless and empty within. He would never be capable of love. Like a great magnet he repulsed
it until his shrivelled heart pumped only hatred around his body.
He loved to hurt. When he trampled the green shoots Sam had lovingly planted down on the
allotment, when he stealthily kicked the small dogs at the shelter where he was pretending to help,
he revelled in secretly betraying his appearance. Spilled blood brought him close to orgasm. Nothing
else symbolised suffering quite like it, for where there was blood there was pain, all the better if he
was the one that had shed it. This one desire drove him, and he dreamed of great continents of
blood splashed like Africa, flooding his apartment, and drowning all his flatmates.
He carried the Stanley knife in his pocket, and their shared desire to cut and slice made them
secret lovers. Charlie would tease himself with the knife, withdrawing and retracting the blade, his
thumb white and shaking as it inched the point along. One day he was sat playing with it on the
promenade when a seagull landed next to him on the dirty bricks, strutting along poking at some
chips that had been dropped. As Charlie looked at it, his eyes became dark and strained in their
sockets. He swiped with the knife, but it was too fast for him, and took off keening into the air. He
sat back hissing bitter curses through his teeth. He felt the knife whisper through his body, and
imagined all the things they would soon do together.
Two young girls walked by; they must have been about fourteen. Charlie smiled to himself as
he slid off the bench and followed behind, hand still in his pocket.