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Extract from 9987 by Nik Jones
I slip the bloodstained note into the till; he drops the film into a bag and leaves. His heavy boots stamp mud into my carpet as he goes. My bloodstained thumb curls around my coffee mug. I sigh, open the storeroom cupboard, and take out the Hoover.
Later, while the drunk kids undress each other in the front porchway, I find myself staring at the note. A lady, more squeamish than me perhaps, refused the note and took coins instead. So I sit, alone again, in the quiet shop with the note in my hands and my thumbprint in blood smeared across Her Majesty’s frown. I’m not sure if I really care but I know I don’t have the energy to worry about this. Outside, it rains; in living rooms all over Elmfield Park the soaps have finished and the shop is getting busy.
I search through the float bag until I find a clean note. Crisp and fresh and with the Queen’s clean face scowling back at me. I throw the bag in the safe and forget about it. I watch the rain splattering against the window, heavy spittle-like globs slithering down the pane. The shop begins to fill.
In Alphabetical DVD a giant blonde wig bobs up and down in time to some unknown beat. A Mammoth bodybuilder-doorman-boxer in drag. The wig slides sideways across the bald head underneath. I watch, not quite bored, as his pink lips purse in frustration. Pig eyes, wrapped in dusty green eyeshadow, narrow and an unshaven chin tightens. In the Disney section by the door a family have camped, cowering from the rain. Two films, two boys arguing, one mother mediating. Their father stands, hands in pockets, stomach bulging from a tight waistband. He stares at the big screen behind me.
‘Get them both,’ he says. ‘It’ll keep them out of our way for a few hours.’
The shop fills. The windows mist. My work starts again and so I recommend and advise against, I change over films, I smile my special stupid-customer smile and I forget, almost entirely, about the bloodstained note.
ISBN: 978-0955632662
www.tontobooks.com
