I've been up all night, and I might sleep all day.
Get your dreams just right, and let them slip away,
I might sleep all day.
And when the roads are clear, we'll head on out of here,
And If you're coming back, I'll see you in the morning
I'm just staring at the ceiling staring back at me,
Just waiting for the daylight to come crawling in on me...

It was ‘Dogma’ that said it first I think. Or maybe ‘Paycheck’. ‘Good Will Hunting’? Some college, Damon-written film anyway. In fact it’s probably been said before to be honest, but nothing becomes official until it’s been produced through Hollywood.
Matt Damon was talking to someone (Ben Affleck? Who knows?) about airports. It always seemed like pretentious shite – how airport arrival rooms were the place to go to watch true human emotions.

(It was probably true to a certain extent though. Sitting in a bar, talking to a random faded twentysomething guy about flights, terrorism (the new ‘hot topic’ apparently), when a waitress came across to ask me what I wanted to drink. Nicely typical drinks in a typical bar – Bud (“Light or regular,” she told me, as if I should be impressed,), Fosters or Corona (the foreign luxury). I had no money, and a maxed-out Visa. The guy brought me a bottle of water so I was allowed to stay – apparently it’s against the law to sit in a smoking area without having paid for the privilege.

The guy was called Ralph – headed back to Detroit, traveling back home to New England. Apparently he’d been to Toronto two months ago – working with demolition photography or something. He chatted – I chainsmoked three cigarettes in as many minutes to avoid talking. I felt uncomfortable, like a kid going to the pub with his dad – sipping tepid Malvern while he decimated three Coronas in as many minutes (exactly like going to the pub with my Dad in fact). He tottered out half an hour later, leaving me sitting and glaring at the waitress who came to clear the table. Five minutes later, I realized my own company was even more boring than Ralph’s, so I left for the departure lounge.)

Anyway, it always annoyed me that these films focused on only the positive aspects of airports – the joyful reuniting and the return of loved ones. Every spectrum has two ends. Maybe they should have tried looking at the departure lounge.
I’d left everyone and everything at the gate. At the goodbye, I had been slightly choked; from them there had been tears.

And it was only as I walked through customs and looked behind at my Mum (still staring, tear-stained) that I thought I’d done something wrong. Maybe I was damming some emotion, or maybe I just wasn’t feeling anything. But as I waited (writing, reading, thinking about what I’d left and what I was going to), I couldn’t help but feel slightly out of place again, expressionless around those lamenting and crying – that somehow, something about me was wrong.

Then I was through the terminal, and the plane took off – leaving my Mum, my UK life and who I was beneath me.

I always pictured consumerism as a monster, you know? Something huge and giant, terrorizing downtown cities. A snapshot, faces held open in fear.
I remember this one cartoon I saw when I was a kid – something in the tabloid comics, a scribble under another meaningless event. There were two people, a 60’s setting (back when movies had class anyway) – eyes and mouth agape, pointing, terrified. A speech bubble floating in some noxious clouds – “Jesus, watch out, it’s coming closer!”
Pan out; a massive Starbucks Coffee Store moving down the street – malevolent teeth and evil, vindictive eyes flashing red with evil.
I don’t know why, but it always stuck with me.

I guess I started traveling because I never really felt at home. My parents split when I was about ten (an excuse to fall back on if I ever fail anything I guess), and I shifted back and forth between the two quite frequently. An eclectic mix of the bohemian Californian rich kid and the Detroit city boy. Beautiful. Journey would be proud.
Something, I guess, had always tugged at me. Doubtless I never noticed it growing up; kept it nicely hidden by tobacco (ages 12-22), alcohol (ages 13-22), cannabis (ages 15-22) and coke (ages 19-22).

So, naturally, university passed in something of a haze. Being honest, it was only an excuse to avoid joining the real world for another three years. But when it was over (three years of dosing around and a minimal pass – which I was always secretly proud of, parents not so secretly disappointed of) I had nothing to do. I was living in Oklahoma at the time; in retrospect there was nothing to really run from, other than the rolling plains and waving wheat (fucking musicals). I guess I was worried, but what about I couldn’t be sure. Probably mutter something about ‘the man’ and ‘the corporations’, who knows? I knew little then and I know little now.
We moved to England when I was twenty-two, and still too lazy to get a job.


Ruth. My mum worked for Shell oil – admin work which gave her a squint and a perpetual smell of petrol.

Steven. Steven didn’t work – retired at thirty-five after some back-related accident put him out of work. I always thought he was just lazy, but better him sitting on the couch getting pissed than working for Nestlé again. I remember telling him they killed more people than TB and Aids combined. He hit me and told me to stop overusing acronyms.
But this story isn’t really about him. Or maybe it is – who knows? All I really know is where this story starts. Shit; candidly I guess I’m not even sure about that.

I woke up earlier than expected. Trans-Atlantic flying’s always a bitch, especially on a charter flight. Amazing how after seven hours there’s still so little to say: complimentary drinks – drunk at eight, hungover by eleven, landed in Detroit at half one in the morning, UK time. Expected to get the 11:30 to Toronto; shut my eyes in the waiting room (a bloody three hour stopover in Detroit; I could almost think of nowhere else I’d least like to be other than a Detroit airport), and when I opened them again, everything was silent. I stood up and threw my bag over my shoulder, pissed off. Falling asleep in the airport’s no biggie – truth is I could probably re-arrange my flight anyway, but it probably meant another few hours in this hellhole, which I wasn’t looking forward to.
It was confusing from then on really; I could remember walking down the silent terminals, watching the shuttle fly over my head, carrying nobody nowhere. Everything otherwise was still. I could remember being hungry; hungry and thirsty, desperate for a cup of tea (the one thing the English do to you is pass on their habits). It happened when I was halfway down the terminal, at a T-junction in the middle of the airport. I felt a sickening sense of vertigo as the roof seemed to stretch higher above me, almost sucking me up into the shadows flickering around the roofs. I heard a crash behind me and turned around. There was something moving in the shadows at the far end of the airport, moving my way, wreathed in so much darkness I couldn’t even make out the shape. Instinctively I turned; turned and ran, feet flapping against the cold tiled floors. But behind me I could hear the thing moving faster; booming footsteps outpacing my own and I turned to watch the shadow obscure my vision.
And just before it fell on me I could see the Starbucks logo gleaming in a shaft of sunlight.

I woke up, still in the terminal. Running a hand through damp hair, I got to my feet and brought a cup of tea from the nearest store (open at midnight, would you believe it?). You wouldn’t guess what it was.

A whiskey chaser at half-five in the morning (half midnight my time) didn’t manage to remove the bitter taste in my throat, even if the coke I’d picked up and done in the bathroom was rapidly relieving me of my tiredness. My mind settled but my stomach didn’t – the J&B was colourfully back out again by half six, I was in Toronto centre by eight. Somehow I managed to find a shit motel, where I paid $20 for a dirty room from an even more dirty manager. Threw my backpack on the bed and lay watching cockroaches climbing up the walls, eyes burning, dreaming, humming Pulp. Chain-smoked four cigarettes, watching the smoke slowly circle the room, feeling the nicotine rush in the back of my head and the pit of my stomach, growing nausea even overtaking the coke comedown. I don’t remember falling asleep, but considering this tale started with me waking up, I guess I must have.

So, like I said, I woke up. Truth be, I thought I’d be out cold until ten or eleven pm; wake up disorientated in the dark and fight a night of staying awake, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. But I emerged from some heavy dream (another chasing one – what does that say about me Sigmund Freud?) at about seven or so; the knocking on the door beating a tattoo on my ears. I rolled over in the narrow bed, had a moment’s extreme disorientation before falling out and onto my back. Somehow, face pressed against the carpet, I managed to mutter “Yeah?”
The door opened slightly and a maid sidled in, eyebrows raised as she watched my clamber up from the floor, blinking sleep from my eyes. “The floors are better for posture.” I mumbled, running a distracted hand through my hair. I gulped, forcing some saliva into a bone-dry mouth. “It straightens the spine.”

She smiled, nervous, unsure, before backing away slowly outside. The door was pulled to with a bang that reverberated around the room, the sound skittering to the rafters and Doppler-dissipating out of the window. Dirty sunlight was filtering in through the curtain cracks; the drifting sounds of a city drifting to sleep. My mind was on fire. I lit a cigarette and watched the sunset dying red through bloodshot eyes.

I dreamed – not for long, but I can’t really remember if I was away or asleep. I’d been lying in my bed when the maid came in again, room keys in her hand. She walked over to my bed, put her hands over my eyes. We fucked – blurred snapshots of disorientating episodes. Then we were lying back together, I had lit a cigarette and the filter was burning my fingers. She looked across, moonlight shimmering patterns down auburn hair and she smiled. There was a moment’s silence as she took the butt and flicked it out the window, fading away to a twinkle before standing up, rearranging clothes, moving towards the door. Shadows flowed, stretched out and settled across the floor; my eyes burned. She turned, framed in the doorway and smiled, wanly, again. “You look just like your Dad.” She shrugged her head towards my wallet, lying open on the bedside table. A blurred photograph; me on my dad’s shoulders, somehow laughing, caught in the sunshine.

The door shut to with a click.

I woke up and opened stinging eyes.


It had been twenty-four hours since I’d slept. Maybe more. I couldn’t really remember, though the figure kept me locked in some perverse pride, watching the clock hand crawl lethargically around to twelve o’clock. Tom Petty sung in the background, and somehow I felt I was freefalling into a Dahli dream of living psychedelia. I passed the time by writing. After only seven hours the bin was overflowing.
The maid hadn’t returned.


It took me almost a minute to realize my mobile was ringing. I rolled over, face shining with sweat, and picked it up with a shaking hand. ‘Mum Mobile’. Fucking phone ‘roaming’ technology – she can annoy me no matter how far away I run. I flick the phone open and cough. “Yeah?”

There was silence, then…”Brad?”

I lay back. “Yeah, hi Mum. What’s up? I’m trying to sleep. It’s half one in the morning here.”

Another silence. “Bradley…”

Bradley. Shit. Something was wrong.
“What’s up Mum?”

Another silence. “Bradley, Steven’s dead.”

I was drinking to his memory. Steven. And it really had come to that – there’s only a certain amount that two people can go through and still have the labels of father and son. Dead at fifty-two: liver failure.

I opened another beer. There could be worse ways to go I suppose. Apparently he didn’t suffer. At least, not unjustly. Over in the course of four hours; on and off machines before he could be called a lost cause, ‘nothing more we can do, we’re sorry for your loss’, yada yada yada. And fifty-two – people had had worse innings. Nowadays he could even be considered lucky.

I opened another beer. For one clear moment I didn’t think of anything. Then I thought about his company. Mum had asked for their help; a meagre wage and pension wasn’t nearly enough to offer sufficient healthcare. Money is life nowadays after all. The extent of their generosity was a “Dear John” letter. The monster reared in my head, and for a second I smiled. You live by the gun, you die by the gun. Place your trust carefully was the only message to learn.

Suddenly, I realized I was drinking less to his memory as to a celebration of his death. Fuck it, what did I have to remember?
May as well celebrate his memory properly.
I opened ‘American Psycho’ and poured myself a straight J&B.

Hours later, the sun was rising; stretching tired fingers over the avenues of downtown Toronto. I remember getting up at some point; at the point where boredom had crecendoed to something beyond, almost a selfish, drunken apathy. I’d opened the curtains and was casting aimless, fluttering eyes over the aimless commuters. Dave Matthews crooned in the background, “When all the little ants are marching; red and black antenna waving; they all do it the same…”

Something slipped in me. I reached into my bag and slipped on my clip-on tie, feeling my eyelashes flutter with stardrop tears.
 

Simon Doyle is a 19 year old student at Lancaster University, currently studying English Language and Creative writing in a three-year BA. After finishing his course, he hopes to go into journalism, whilst looking towards getting fiction professionally published. When not at university he lives below London with his parents and older brother."