Further down this way

‘Further down this way. You’ll get there if you just go further down across mate.’
I thanked the man and went on down, past the lot to Luton T1. Hard left to arrivals. There was a big gate there with metal chairs up front. The overhead lights shone bright and sterile like they do at the hospital. I felt a strange meld of excited and scared, and I’d been tortured and the torture had peaked for weeks – there were days when I felt I could hardly make it but the heat always left. The filth took a texture so vivid the flames in my head would sprout and turn my brain white-hot. The panics went away fast, though. You have to keep going and the threat’s not mortal til it’s physical, like a four-ton night bus taking the skin off your nose. Exhibit A: war-torn crackheads skirting Mile End streets toppled over like foetuses.
I’d toppled over a few times – I’d writhed at least, in my bed on Tent Street. Second floor there on the council block. Purple bins piling high full of rubber up front, with those cot frames, so many, I never thought a building could produce so many. Foxes too, sick, scouring through the lot at daytime. The room was small but it was big enough to stay cloudy with smoke day in and out. Everyone would come in. Everyone would come in but most nights I’d spend alone, shelves stacked diagonally with the Churchill books too and I’d stare at the shelves, or I’d watch something, and forget. Every time every 20 minutes and sometimes less, sometimes I got an hour’s break but the thoughts would come, or the thought, wrong, visceral and wrong like a punishment and I couldn’t shake it.
I got the thoughts at the gate waiting. It was a good moment but they always came.
My brother walked out. Black puffer like a roadman – I’d given him the black puffer. We paid the fair and took the ride on the National Rail. Tent street glum and dark on arrival. We went in and we watched a film and I asked him before if he minded the smoke and of course he said no. Flick started off good but ended a little ridiculous, we agreed on that. An old man vindictively energetic on a rampage. Give us a break.
Next day we woke up late and I took him out with a friend from uni. We got drunk and it was fun. Wentworth Arms with the back garden, crackheads ambling in an out selling stolen Tesco goods, one came with chicken and socks. When we left we were doused. Up on the plane tree up front hung a light, shiny, glistening with the moon and golden, and doused as we were we would have sworn it was magic. So I got up on my brother’s hands his fingers interlaced. I clambered up to the branch and caught the light. When he eased me back down we took a look and it was a strand of golden ribbon plastic.
He met Charlie and we played FIFA, with the laptop strapped to the shoddy screen up front of the bed on the black shelf in my smoky room. The thought kept coming and coming visceral and wrong like a punishment and I wanted it to end so I could send him away pleased before the dark took hold.
The next day I took him back to Luton and I knew where to find T1. He ambled through the gate happy and he’d had a good time and so had I. We shook hands and hugged and I thanked him and he thanked me and I saw him strut through the revolving doors. I left and the thought was there and I begged it. I pushed it way down as hard as I could but it’d been there the whole time and often. I went to T1 arrivals and sat down cramped and I looked at the doors from two days before. I sobbed so much I thought my lungs caved in, and toppled over with head in knees.