Achilles Heel

A couple are arguing and the boy is threatening the girl physically. He has pulled her hair, and she has been crying for about three hours straight. She is trying to mute her shrieks of fear, but she can't hold it in when he suggests that she wants to have a threesome with her baby daughter and another boy or when he starts punching her leg and throwing baby toys around the room. NFL is on the tele and the geography of 'The Cardinals' team is discussed. Tesco Value ready salted crisps. Stale. No subscription to LA Muscle but there is protein shakes and steroids. Half-past-five in the morning and shaking from too many sugary alcopops. You get up and sneak out of the building, out of the door, through the corridor, down the stairs and out the front door. You start to run, your legs are achey and you are cold because you dont have a jacket on. After about ten minutes you start to sweat: alcohol. Your arms are wet, and sticky but in the morning chill the alcohol saturated sweat starts to tingle. You start to regret that Donner Kebab you had after the club, because with every five steps you can taste it in your mouth as you burp. You stick out a thumb half-heartedly at cars that drive past as you ascend a two-mile long hill. Nobody stops and this is the moment you appreciate each milliliter of petrol that you are going to use in the up-and-coming week. When you get to the stop of the hill, you think its easy, and you think you are nearly home. But it turns out that the hill takes considerably longer to walk down than it does to drive down in a 1.25 litre Ford car. On this walk, you think about beautiful things and you gain a different perspective on the past. You have a picturesque view of the sun rising over the cliff and beaming across the bay to a town across the estuary. The sky is glowing red and the fields of maize are fluttering in the breeze, with bits of tumbleweed twirling around like extinguished catherine wheels. The smell of nature evades you; the numbness of a hangover enfolds you. When you get to your house, you brush your teeth, repeatedly and fruitlessly to freshen your breath and then you pass out on your bed listening to Radiohead - Weird Fishes.