Streets of fire

A picture of a boy and a miner freshly out of the mine inspired me to write this piece of flash fiction…

I passed a window full of mannequins.

Yeah… OK, shop dummies. And they looked gorgeous, so pink and blonde and so pure. I envied them their life. No air, no time, no work, no stress, no food… No worries.

My fingers stuck to the glass. Chin up against it. I saw myself in a mirror. They’d put mirrors up to make the room look bigger. And I could see the ends of my fingers stuck to the glass in the lights. They was white. And I let the tension go out my wrists, and my hands and my finger ends became pink, yeah? and as they unstuck, they were brown again. And I looked at my brown face in the mirror, and I looked at theirs again and y’know I hated them. ‘cos they’re not real. None of it. It’s not real is it?

Y’know what? there’s this bin outside by one of those phone box things. No, not a phone box like you talk in. One where all the wires go, you know? I picked it up. No, the bin. I dunno how I did it. It was full of proper stinkin’ stuff. I was nearly sick with it. Don’t they empty them now? I just got my hands in the openings y’know and I just moved back near the road and I just launched it.

It was so funny! One minute it was such a perfect scene in there. Y’know like housie-housie.

Yeah yeah, I meant nicey-nicey. Yeah you was right. All right, yeah… again.

Then when this bin went through the glass it was like Hiro… wotsit? Yeah.. yeah Hiroshima or something’. The dummies went flying’ all over ‘n’ this alarm starts flashin’. Pretty weak glass in’it? I thought it was supposed to be wotsit, toughened now? Well that Selfridges stuff, it’s like plastic or cellophane! Smashed right through it.

And y’know what? I couldn’t hear that freakin’ alarm. Know why? Every other freakin shop had smashed windows and alarms goin’ off. Ha ha ha! Yeah that’s why i chose that one. It hadn’t been done. They missed that one.

Man, it’s weird though innit? I turned into Onslow Road and the whole freakin’ street was on fire. Nah, not the houses… Like wotsit, yeah the tarmac? Musta been petrol or oil on the road. And man it was roasting’ there! I mean all the cars y’know, they were just on one side of the road. Yeah no parkin’ on the other. And they was all on fire too. Man, it was a firestorm. I only looked. I didn’t go down there. Couldn’t hack it, man. It was wild. Yeah, love it!