Turtle Sachet

Prologue

Happiness is just a lick away.

It was a cold dismal night and the streets were desolate; as always. Towering abandoned skyscrapers - skeletons of what they once were - perforated the clouds, casting a permanent shadow onto everything. It never got completely dark or light in this place - the sun was old now. Everything was old. Once beautiful mirrors, now just shattered shards. A dark shifting fog crept its way between the buildings, watching the world. Watching everything.

Eddie gazed up at it all, his back against the damp pavement, and quietly sung a song he’d once heard at the dock. Wind, bitter and frosty trickled down his neck, forcing him to pull his coat higher around his ears. He’d gotten used to the cold; there wasn’t much heat anymore without the sun and with oil in such scarcity. It had come to the bit in the song where you whistled, but Eddie couldn’t whistle, he didn’t have any teeth, and so he just hummed.

Back at home his mother would be wondering where her son had gone and if he was ever coming back. She would be drinking her way through a bottle of whisky and crying because she couldn’t remember his name or her own and because she was a bad parent and she knew it. It wasn’t that she meant to be neglectful; she just couldn’t focus her mind on any one thing at a time anymore. Eddie brought food for the both of them by looking in the bins behind the fast food restaurants. If he had something to leave in return, he occasionally borrowed from those better off – he knew stealing was wrong.

Gobdang, it’s baltic here. He reached into a pocket and retrieved his final sachet, wondering if he was making a mistake by opening his last one. It would be a while until he could get another. With a shiver, he disregarded the future and tore it open.

A small turtle crawled out of the sachet and up his arm to his shoulder. Once there, it turned and smiled at him. He smiled toothlessly back. It licked him and within moments the lifeless alleyways contorted into indefinable shapes disintegrating into nothingness. The world was black and warm and wet. It was comfortable. It was happy.

1

Mr. Jitsu

“It’s a disgrace what’s happened to this world. It’s gone to shit.”

When no response was received, he continued.

“Just look at that throbo there. Out of his head on sachet. I should get my SA80 and do the world a favour.”

Nathan thought that there was probably a reason the grubby man was lying in the street and felt a hint of sympathy toward him. He mentioned no such thing to him though.

“Well, boy?”

Silence.

“Are you listening to me, boy?”

The back of a hand.

“Well?”

“Yes, Sir, those junkie scumbags make me want to puke my fucking brains out.”

There was a startled pause during which Nathan’s father seemed to consider if his son were mocking him.

“Good, good. Me too, son. Me too.”

He glared at all the little windows high above him, furious that they had to walk through this part of the city. His face was contorted through the years by his lack of comfort with anything he encountered outside of his box. His features were almost as harsh as his views and in his view almost everybody should be shot. The man on the floor was smiling and singing to himself. He looked happy in a half-starved kind of way. Nathan doubted the man had eaten in the past few days.

“The problems really started when they legalised sachets. They sell them in vending machines now, did you know that?”

Nathan nodded, paying little attention to anything except the man with no teeth. He looked so cold. He looked up suddenly, straight at Nathan and grinned. It wasn’t an unfriendly grin, but with the lack of teeth it made him look ghastly. Nathan subconsciously shrunk back as the man slowly got to his feet and dragged his way through the streets, stumbling occasionally. He was still singing.

*****

The sea of cardboard boxes and plastic sachets filled the deserted wasteland like a rubbish tip in summer; a surreal Tartarus. Grey dust fell from nowhere in particular onto nothing in particular, making everything look dead. Clive just gazed at it all; at his empire, his universe. He was the inventor of the low-budget accommodation now used throughout the world to house those living in penury. Some (generally low status celebrities and pretentious students with too much money) lived in the superior alternative which was lined in bubble wrap - cold, but “fashionable”.

Clive despised fashion, and completely failed to see the point in it. He did, however, see the point in making money and “off the wall” housing estates were proving to be very lucrative indeed.

A female voice emitted from a small machine on his desk.

“Mr. Gilliam – a client here to see you.”

“Who is it?” There was a pause.

“Mr. Jitsu.”

Clive was silent for a moment or two. He sent a quick prayer to God, Allah, Vishnu and Satan, realising that now was probably not the time to become polytheistic.

“Tell him to wait a moment.”

“He’s already on his way.”

Cursing, Clive opened the window to his office on the 42^nd floor and leapt out.