For once, Jack was rewarded with a leisure day, and he spent it thus. He sat down. He got up. He sat down again. Blankly, he stared at his typewriter. He decided to go outside, and the sky was crying, sick, and grey. The frost nipped his skin and made his pale face paler. The sun glared. A dog tied to a lamp post lunged at him, aiming to kill but failing. Its breath turned to fog with forceful puffs. Jack frowned at the thing with its fur so long and saturated with rain and dirt, with wet, black red-rimmed eyes, and with its solitude but not freedom. He held out his hand, and when the mutt went to maim it, he pulled away. He was about to tantalise it again, but he heard footsteps. To himself, he grimaced.

Somewhere, it was quiet outside save for the barking of some dog. The sheets were warm only for their ability to trap energy and not for another body wrapped in them. Ralph tried to become unconscious again, but white light rested on his eyelids better than he rested on his bed. He opened his eyes to discover the sky turned to bullshit. He rolled over. His badly bitten fingernails scraped at his scalp to the best of their ability. Dandruff fell in soft flakes. Groaning, he stretched himself at the foot of his bed and went slack again. Ralph became a pile on the floor.

Aside from work, Jack walked. He cleared blocks upon blocks until he realised he wouldn't find what he wanted, until he forgot he wanted, and his feet hurt. His chest, his heart. He must have passed by hundreds, thousands — women, men, black, white, oriental, blond, freckled, ugly, beautiful, young, old — and not one seized him, shook him outside of himself. He saw a long-haired hippie, so he thought of his staunchness; a beaten boy, so he thought of his cruelty; the regular prostitutes, so he thought, and he was caught between pride and shame for his disinterest. The proximity to reality was not a promise. He felt he was in a zoo. Jack saw an animal, and he thought.

Between the time more defined points of Ralph's day, he finds his own hands trying to suffocate him in cloth, obscuring his face with a muffler. He finds himself being taken away, out the door, down the street, under the floor. He's beneath the people in a lavatory with pipes bulging out the walls and peeling grout tiles and dim grey light. Ralph's cupped hands filled with water in which he submerged his face. The wetness ran down to his elbows and dripped onto his undershirt, making it stick to his skin. He shivered and looked in the mirror. The door to the back whistled open with a wild swing. Ralph met the man's eyes in the mirror, and no sooner did he look away. He had felt his [placeholder, skin, labour], [so he must avert ][to preserve the dignity of personality].

"We haven't formally met," the man said. "There's no hard feelings. It's what it is."

Ralph made a noise of affirmation and bit his tongue at the alien sound. He had grunted below him before.

"If I win, I'll buy you a pint." Pint, and then what would there be to talk about? The weather? The war? "Your name?"

"Ralph. Yours?" He sped through the words (like how when you run after a long time of not running, you can only do it briefly, and with speaking, tersely.)

"Not going anywhere big with that name. I'm Jack," he said, and Ralph turned away from the sink with that. Ralph twisted the tap off.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" Ralph said. Jack paused.

"Your accent," Jack said.

His hair. Has his hair always been that dark? Ralph tried to recall, but Jack was looking at him.

"Huh?"

"It's not really American." (Through Ralph's silence, his original manner of speaking has been preserved. He does a lot of odd jobs, and they don't require eloquence.)

His voice. It's deeper now than it was. No, his accent. It left. It left because of

"Sure, right. Do I know you?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

"Remember the island?"

His hair. It's darker. His freckles are almost gone. His heart. Is his heart

"What?"

"Never-mind. Sorry," he said, tearing the skin off his bottom lip. "I guess not."

The cathedral down the street towers over bystanders as if it were God himself. Jack stands outside, shivering, listening to the sermon. He would have entered, but he heard the walls echo with words about temptation and man's sin, and his hands got clammy, and he didn't need to shiver inside when he could do the same outside. Two boys — one in a navy pullover and the other in an Oxford number — walked out the tall doors.

"Are you doing anything later today?"

"Just choir in the evening," the other boy said. He skipped down the lane.

"Hey," Blue-sweater followed him quickly, pulling at the hem of his shirt. "That's boring. Singing the same old songs. You don't even understand it. There's cooler things to do, you know"

"Like what?"

It was a good novelty.

Ralph's eyes spotted the shape of Jack in the audience. His vision had grown dull, but Jack just barely resembled the boy he knew. Fixated on the red smudge, Ralph stripped off his layers of clothes. Jack leaned forward in his seat, wondering why that man who looked a lot like that boy he knew when he was a kid was staring at him. He hemmed, looking at the audience around him.. He could see the two boys from church in the back, play-fighting. He bit the inside of his cheek, drawing blood. On the stage, Ralph was bare save for trunks and so was the other man. Jack looked away again.

(silent and surreal) Everyone else was respectful, as if this were a concert and not what it was. Jack swung at Ralph, and Ralph trembled. His foot slid on the powdery floor, and he lurched. A shock ran along his spine, and Ralph sprung himself on Jack, refraining from grabbing at his hair like some frightened, catty girl. Their skin — rough, tacky — stuck together briefly before Ralph raised his fist and dropped it again and again on his chest. Jack huffed with each blow and then

"Jack, hey."

"Yeah?"

"Do you like doing this?"

He jabbed him on the pec.

"Sure."

These matches are not official. The Marquess of Queensbury did not give this basement his stamp of approval. Nobody's rooting for Ralph in the entire country, except perhaps his mother and... Jack was right; Ralph was the worst boxer name. Twelve matches, each three minutes — this was how things were conducted. Twelve matches could be boiled down to ten or stretched to fifteen, depending on how uppity the boys were. Ralph went to one of the fights when he was coming into adulthood, yet he was still young.  He was inclined to attack first, to hurt people who

"Well, it hurts."

"Do you want to forfeit?"

"No," he said.  "I swear I knew someone named Jack before, when I was a kid."

"Did you?  Not me."

"It can't be anybody else."

"New York is a big city."

"I was in love with you."

"What?" he paused, which allowed for Ralph to slug him in the shoulder.  "Can we do this after?"

"Okay,"




The Jack in the audience winced. The back of his neck tingled. He looked about him, for the voice calling his name, as if it could have been anywhere else but the ring. He would have even entertained the thought that he had lost his mind.

The referee slung Jack over his shoulder. Ralph approached

"What is your last name?"

"What the hell?"

"What is it?"

"James. James. Go away."

Ralph stood quietly. Was it such that he changed his last name? Had his head been screwed up? Ralph's blood chilled. He tried to remember.

Jack Merridew had come up to Ralph like an apparition. Ralph felt like he could go right through him. He was tempted to step forward and see that his mind was lying.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Jack Merridew."

"Oh.  That's my opponent's name." He processed the words in his mind and felt a chill.  "Hello."

"Well, I'm a journalist. I write about things. These sorts of things," he gestured, " — aren't spoken about much. I think they can be."

"Yes, I think so, too."

"How about we go somewhere else?"







The weather was horrible. Their skins were pale. If you were to cut it off and dry it, it'd crumble. It would be horrible leather. Human-skin jacket. Ethically sourced. Anyway, they banged. I'll tell you all about it. They walked to Jack's house because stranger-danger was not a common concept, and especially not for guys. because most of them who went places knew what they were doing and what they wanted and bent over and all that.  Ralph piled on his clothes and he was sweaty. He was uncomfortable but the outside weather hit his face severely. THe two walked back like penguins, little drops of snow falling on their faces. Melting on their skin and all that. When they stepped outside, it had just begun to snow. The streets were not soft; they were smothered in an icy, brown sludge.

"You didn't ask Jack?"

"He was badly hurt."

"Right. What makes you think I won't do the same to you?" He had, in his mind.

"Ralph," he said, with an edge to his voice. "What were you saying to him earlier?"

"I wasn't saying it to him. I was saying it to you. Or what I thought was you."

Nobody was looking at them. They may have well not existed, but they were there, and they will always be there in those moments of time, in that position, radiating warmth.

"Oh, come inside."

"I don't know."

"No, I want you to. Really."

They shuffled inside, shaking off the biting wind.  Before the den was a thin spiral of steel stairs, grated so that dirt would slip down and pile at the ground.  The den was dim and cool with the outside staring into the room, resting quietly like fog.  Jack flicked on the lights — dim, barely even contituting the title of light, it more-so turning the room a grimy yellow —  and went to put on the fireplace.  





Created 18 March 2025
Last updated 18 March 2025
Process of writing started 28 December 2024