london // bulldog // murder
a short story.
Inspired by a true story (link here). Originally published in free world fiction🌎.
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Well, so what? I didn’t know who the hell he was.
And he wasn’t living in London. Well, he was living in London, to be sure, but London is not, in fact, any kind of geographical thing. It is more of a collective agreement.
I was on my way home from work.
He was looking at me in the way a pissed-off bulldog might look at the brick wall its ancestors had run into head-first — like he had never known me, but was sure that I had caused him a great deal of harm; a harm that had become deeply ingrained, and was now absolutely irreparable. I remember, he did have something of a flat nose. I tried to mutter a hello, but as was usual in these situations, I remembered that I was in London, and decided to keep my mouth shut.
For several seconds, I put my mind back to its usual work. How many cans I had left in the store-cupboard. Why I was staring at an old advert for life insurance. What I was going to tell everyone if Lindsay “wasn’t up for it” again tonight. Most of these questions I didn’t need to answer, because one of the things I have grown most fond of in this city is the general, lethargic acceptance that absolutely nothing is going to be alright, so you don’t have to worry about a thing.
That, I think, is it. London. The soggy, involved contract we fantastically built tubes under and towers on top of. London.
So when he pushed me, I’m not even sure I was worried. All I remember is thinking: I might be going to die in this city, and the bastard still stood on the platform (with that angry, flat, doggish nose of his) wasn’t even living in it.
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