Meltwater - Writing - The Cancer Bandit

Jonathan rested limply in the grey bench, staring out to England across the Bristol Channel. He couldn't help but wonder if his life would have been different if he had been born on the other side of it. The fine drizzle melted into his skin through his soaked clothes, buy he didn't mind the dampness, it made him feel alive. He turned his head to look at the high rise, glowing, kaleidoscope facades of the golden arcades, their myriad reflections reaching across the promenade to touch the feet of his bench.

The wetness of the promenade stretched away from him in both directions, bookended on each side by the low lying headlands. In front of him lay the dirty expanse of sand known as Barry Island beach. Recently, it had been making him angry at how they could get away with calling it a beach, and a pleasure one at that. It had become a dumping ground for the tide of poisons and debris that ebbed back and forth along the Bristol Channel. The sea had turned a funny colour many years ago. He could remember his joyful day trips to the Island when he was young, and how the sea was full of people splashing and jumping in the glee of a hot Summer's day on the beach. Now no one went in the thick brown mire that was hungrily glooping at the dirty sand, for fear of coming face to face with a floating condom or fly infested faeces, the sea's new wildlife that had evolved from many decades of heavy industrial waste and poor sewerage outlets.

It made him sad to see the beach full of gaudy primary coloured windbreaks, deck chairs and people, and an empty sea, whose darkness made a sharp contrast with the crowded beach. The surface of the water was broken only by the odd foolhardy dog and the bobbing turds. That was the main reason he didn't come to the beach any more, except when it was cold or raining. Then the colour of the sea didn't look out of place with the grey of the air and the subdued browns of the headlands descent into the musty rippling surface.

The sky was starting to lose its twilight greyness as the pale luminescence fell away over the horizon, the rows of chalets on the further headland started to glow from the lights of the pleasure park behind Jonathan's bench. The funfair lay back behind him, half way between his seat and the distant headland. Its multi-coloured, hypnotic, tendrils ran in multiplied lines of candy floss tainted, glowing lights. The lines of light were occasionally broken where the dead bulbs had not been replaced for many a season. The coloured reflections played patterns over the highlighted side of his face.
The orange brown glow of the sky above his head was pushing down on him with its heavy weight of thickening drizzle. From the fairground ran the towering rows of Victorian terraced seaside buildings, whose ground floors were now spilling out onto the pavement with their helicopter rides and palm reading machines. Beyond lay the radiant interiors filled with noisy fruit machines and flashing space invaders set in rows, around which the many people feverishly milled, eager to part with their shiny new coins.

Jonathan understood the urge which compelled the activity only too well, the premise of winning ten quid with the first coin soon gave way to the hope of winning two on the tenth pound coin placed in the hypnotic slot. On the space invaders machines the thrill of getting through to the next level of game play soon ate up many a well earned coin. The flashing palaces of money taking heaven lay directly behind his bench, and it was in them that he had spent most of his day. He knew only too well about the gambling compulsions, he had spent the last the thirteen years of his life as bandit addict and a video game freak.

Jonathan sat staring at England, now a dark smudge on the horizon, white, yellow and orange pinpricks broke the surface of the smear at irregular spacings. He could just make out the twin towers of Hinckley B, the reactors faintly lit by the lights of the power complex, two ominous pale grey rectangles in the distance. He thought again about how different his life might have been had he been born on that side of the channel. Maybe he would have been in a different position, maybe he would have avoided the problems he been dogged with. Maybe he would not have put his first pound in one of those fruit machines, the aptly named bandits. Maybe he would have made different friends, any friends, and not been so lonely. Maybe his parents would still love him, leaving a proper home to return too. But then again, he thought to himself, I'd have just been sat on that side thinking the same thing.

He winced at the pain that was caressing his body from the inside. It had been with him all day, only disappearing when he was engrossed in one of the video games, or when the total on the bandit's win bank was at a worthwhile figure. It was making him feel faint, his head echoed the blackness of the enclosing night, until he lifted his head heavenwards, his pale face and sunken eyes washed by the increasing moistness of the drizzle. The tablets he had taken an hour ago were starting to clear the pain. He found his foggy mind turning back to the start of the day.

He'd left the chemists at ten that morning, after collecting his prescription, and made his way to the train station that would bring him to the Island. The previous day he had sold his collection of albums, except for a couple of tapes, in order to finance the trip. He had sworn that he would never sell his music, he loved it too much, but he needed to make this trip. he was proud of the collection he had amassed in the short time he was working. For two years after he'd left school he worked as a labourer on a building site in Cardiff, before being made redundant. The pay had been good, and it was the only time that he had been able to keep away from the arcades, the record collecting had become his main obsession, one which took more of his money than the bandits ever did. But he could afford it when he was working. He'd amassed a very large range of records of varying styles and eras, the one common asset being that he loved them all. He'd vowed he'd never sell them, but his last giro had gone down the silver slot and down his gullet. He needed to make this trip more than anything in the world, so he sold them all.

He had no choice but to take the poor amount of money from the sale, leaving the second hand record shop owner laughing. He had made a killing on Jonathan's records, giving him seventy five pound for over three hundred records. His average resale price was about four pounds a record, so if he managed to sell the lot he would make a profit of over a thousand pounds, give or take. Jonathan knew that he would have to take a massive loss when he sold them. He was prepared to do it though, and was secretly surprised that he had made as much as seventy five quid, more than he had expected. But this happiness soon gave way to regret. He needed to put that behind him, as today was to be the most important day of his life.

So with his seventy five pounds in his pocket, Jonathan left the station at Cardiff for the lights and action of Barry Island. He had always loved the journey between the two neighbouring towns, the thrill of seeing the backside of his home town from the railway lines gave him a voyeuristic thrill. He always felt that he was passing through the back gardens of peoples lives. That morning the drizzle had just started, making him happy as he knew that the seaside would be empty, no one liked Barry Island in the greyness and rain of a spring day, it was too dreary. It was a sorry place at the best of times, having been deteriorating for many years, as people went there less and less; hijacked by the bigger and newer pleasure parks just an hour or so's drive up the motorway.

People no longer wanted the simple but effective thrill rides that the small funfair provided, they wanted to be spun and twisted, upside down and inside out. The rides at the island fair had aged and become antique exhibits in a small alter to the search for the ultimate thrill. Thirty years ago it was a major holiday resort, but now it was no more than a squalid reminder of the days when the South Wales coast gave birth to much money and leisure. It had become a decaying, dirty and rundown centre for the local underclass to come and have a day out for cheap. The resort was locked and isolated between the chemical plants, docks and power stations which had killed the coastline which supported them. The urban sprawl of the inner city lay but a few minutes away from the resort, where there were once fields, and slowly and surely its cancerous spread would one day engulf the bygone Victorian splendour of the sea front.

The railway lines between Cardiff and the Island followed the decay, from the capital's centre to the resort. The colours that dominated the journey were brown and grey. He liked those colours, he felt comfortable with them, they were the colours of his life, shitty and depressing. He thought that was why he felt a strange easiness and peace when he visited Barry Island in the rain. it was like returning to the sights and sensations of his earlier life.

Brown and grey had been the dominating colours where he grew up. The back lanes of his choked and grimy childhood stomping ground; the row upon row of the inner city; his school, the teachers; the concreted back gardens of his friends, and his dog-eared teddy. They had been the colours of his teenage years, the secondary school; The view from the school's windows, across the docks, the steel works and the industrial estates to the Bristol Channel, and further across to England. They were the colours of his teachers; the lessons he never understood; his body from the frequent beatings he received from the school's thugs; the places he hid in from the rain when he absconded from school and the coins that he first placed in the fruit machines at the age of thirteen. They were the colours of his post school days, the building site he worked on; the council bedsit he moved to after his parents chucked him out; the endless rollies he smoked every day when playing the bandits; the way he felt when he had spent the last of his giro on the bandits, leaving him too watch other people play them and win his money back; being so skint that he had to scavenge in ashtrays for fat stub ends, to break open in order to have a smoke. And they were the colours that were with him now, Barry Island; the nicotine stains on his fingers; the fog in his head; the sea, the rain, and how he was feeling now that he had lost his last pound to the arcade owner.

The painkillers were starting to work, he could feel them easing the gnawing inside. He felt truly alive in the rain, and it was now more than ever that he wanted to feel he existed. He reached into the plastic carrier bag by his side, and pulled out a packet of Benson and Hedges cigarettes. He had treated himself too three packets for his day trip, and was now well into his last pack. He looked inside, finding the remaining two smokes, too whom he apologised for separating, took one out and placed it between his lips. He went back inside the bag to find his cheap plastic clipper lighter, lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply.

It caused him to erupt in a violent fit of body shaking coughs and splutters, he cursed but continued to smoke. He looked out at the now dark expanse before him, the clouds thinning sufficiently to allow a solitary star to blink at him with the knowledge of vast aeons of lifetime.
There was the odd whoop of terror from the wet, shiny and desolate funfair behind him. There, one of the odd few patrons who had been foolish enough to venture out in the rain had an almost scarier sensation on one of the newer, but still old thrill rides. The fair had only opened at the start of the week for the spring half term, awaking to live again after its grim and shuttered sleep through the winters bitter season. The arcades remained open though, theirs being the duty to continue the pleasure activities that the place had once been renowned for. Although they were open throughout the winter, Jonathan never did his weeks gambling at the Island arcades. He preferred the sleazy high street arcades of the inner city back in Cardiff, they carried an air of desperate hopelessness, which he preferred to the bright coloured optimism of the sea side's big brothers.

He never came to understand why he was so hooked on the bright flashing machines, but he understood the shame that came from losing all his money to them. It wasn't that he lost all the time, sometimes he would win lots, but it always ended up going back into the machines the next day. It caused him great shame to remember the times he stole from his parents in order to go to the machines. It went on for years, a fiver here, a tenner there and once in a while the odd twenty. He always been able to persuade them that they'd lost it else where. That was until the fateful morning when his mother walked in and found him with his sweaty hand grasped on the twenty pound note that he was taking from her old worn handbag.

He couldn't bluff his way out of it, being caught red handed like that, and his attempts to bluff had led to an increasing anger from his mother, as she realised the full truth of past lies. Life hadn't been easy after that, and things finally came to a head when ironically, his mother did actually lose a twenty pound note, she knew in her mind who to blame. In his innocence he denied all, as it was the truth, but when his father became involved things became violent. He left, disowned by his parents. He hadn't spoken to them in five years, and ever since he had planned this trip he felt guilty as hell for what he had done to them, and his behaviour that had led to it.

So the night before his trip he decided to write them a letter. In it he apologised, and explained that he understand their anger and disavowals. He also told them about his life since, and that it wasn't their fault that he had turned out the way he did, and not to feel guilty about it. He also told them how he was going to change things for the better. Finally, he told them that despite everything he still loved them, which was something that he'd never been able to tell them face to face. He'd posted it that morning on his way to the hospital, happy in the knowledge that when the letter arrived the next day he would have changed his life.

Jonathan remembered being told once that fruit machines and video games were carcinogenic, mystery rays emanated from them, a side effect of the hypnotic ray that the builders put into the machines in order to make the players spend more money on them. Or was it something to do with the flashing lights, when placed in certain configurations, he couldn't quite remember. He didn't believe that the machines were dangerous, or had the capabilities to control the player, but it was a convenient excuses to why he went into a sociopathic daze when he was playing them, not caring about putting the next coin in, or the next, or the next seven.

As he sat on the bench looking at England, in the arsehole of the South Wales coast, his mind continued wandering back to the day he that he'd had. He was oblivious to the sounds and lights dancing joyfully in the background. He was busy trying to control the coughing cacophony as he finished his cigarette. The wind was dying down, taking much of the sting out of the cold that was enveloping his wet body. He still felt the cold, which was a good feeling, an alive feeling. The cold, the wet, the smoke, and the salt air of the sea raised his spirits. He let his mind continue drifting, recalling his train journey in vivid grey and brown. Past the backs of the terraced houses that lined the railway lines, where on occasions when the train had slowed to an almost halting speed and he was allowed a glimpse into the other peoples private domains.

He would stare intently through the rows of back bedroom and bathroom windows, each with their own private histories of lust and love, love and hatred, life and death. He would often think about what may or may not have gone on in them, as he had done that day, and the many times before. He would often hope to see something exciting, a naked lady, a bout of lovemaking, a murder, or just people living happily. He never did, not today, nor ever before.

The Journey had continued on through the grey terraces and the brown factories, until the tight knot of civilisation gave way to the looser tied mass of suburbia, and for two minutes the straggling excuse for a green belt. The break of green was the only change from the browns and greys of the towns, but for Jonathan it was an essential change of scene in order to enforce the feeling of travelling some distance away from his home city. It was after the brief green garter that his favourite part of the trip began to enfold. Through the trees the tall towers and chimneys of the chemical plants began to emerge, the green fields giving way to the squalid docks, and soon the trip through the old port would begin the excitement of seeing the first of the tallest rides of the island fair over the headland that separated the industrial area from the pleasure area. It always touched him with an uneasy excitement. Uneasy because he felt embarrassed that he should still be excited at the age of twenty six at the first glimpse at the zenith of the tallest ride over the crest of the fully housed outcrop.

After clearing the derelict docks, and rounding the headland, the train did a ninety degree, long and sweeping turn to face the pleasure zone full on. Jonathan had always wondered why the place was called Barry Island, as it was far from being an island, it was fully landlocked and gave no hint of being an island. It wasn't as if there were any in the immediate vicinity either, apart from the distant and faint outlines of the twin islands of Flatholme and Steepholme, many miles out into the Bristol Channel. It was only recently that he had discovered that it was at one time, up until the coal boom of the late nineteenth century, an island. A causeway was built to join the large area of the island to the mainland, giving shelter to the docks on one side and creating the pleasure beach on the other. Where the two poles of existence had once fed on each other, it was now a one sided trade, the pleasure area now fed on the debris from the docks; the waste, the chemicals, the dirt and the unemployed.

It was on this half mile wide causeway that the train turned. Running parallel to the raised train track was the only road into the place, and on the other side of the rails the new sewerage plant which had only recently been built. It was meant to be the remedy for the beaches shit and condom problem, he couldn't help but think that it was to little to late. Jonathan remembered what used to stand in its place when he was young, it was the trains' graveyard. There used to be rows of rust red, old and battered steam trains, their worth done, they had been left in long lines to age and rust; more sad reminders of the areas once prosperous heritage. The raised track of the train ran on its own bank that looked down on the road which in turn looked down on the artificial bay created by the land filling of the straits that once separated the island from Barry.

It was like a proportionate equation, the closer down the causeway the train got to the Island's railway station, the more excited Jonathan became. The station was the end of the line, an old redbrick unmanned station that had once seen better days. It was a large boarded up station that had once been busy, but nowadays the only thing that was ever open was the gateway to another face of life, the life of the lost childhood of wurlitzers and roundabouts, Barry Island.

He coughed some more and flicked the butt of his cigarette onto the puddle soaked concrete. He could feel the pain receding, but his coughs were becoming more fierce. The rain had now stopped, a deep and cold ultramarine had started showing through the bulbous and ochre candyfloss sky, the lights of Weston glowed fiercely on the horizon. Jonathan sighed, and wondered what his parents were doing at that moment. His letter should arrive the next morning, and he tried to picture the look on their faces when they read it. He wondered if they still loved him and cared about him, knowing that his letter would tell them that he still loved them after all that had happened. He knew that deep down they should still love him, but it didn't help the way he was feeling.

His coughing was starting to ease, but his head was starting to become more cloudy as the time passed. He started to shiver in his cold and clammy clothes, and with a tired movement he slowly fumbled in the rustling carrier bag for the packet containing his last cigarette. His shivers were climbing to a fever pitch, but he didn't care as they were generating some much needed heat. He placed the stub end in his mouth and clicked his lighter so that his face glowed orange in the night. He inhaled, coughed and shivered in one spasmodic movement, trying to fix his mind on the day passed. It took a lot of effort to focus the empty cinema hall of his head, and change the reel of the movie that was his day.

From the station he went to the Carousal, his favourite arcade. After buying his cigarettes and paying his train fare, he was left with about sixty pounds. He had also had to buy some batteries for his cheap personal stereo, to listen in wonderful tinophonic sound to the last of his tapes. The journey was always made better with some music to keep his mind of the drudgery. In the arcade he changed his first tenner with the girl behind the glass shield of the change kiosk, and strode over to the first of the many machines that he would play that day. He did not want to start out gambling so he played one of the video games as they were not as much of a drain on the cash.

He went to one of favourite games first. His main reason for liking the game so much was that it was played with the aid of a motorised and pneumatic cabinet which mimicked the movements of the jet man on the screen. The other reason he liked it so much was for the highly fantastical and imaginative graphics, which were extremely realistic looking. Flying through the chequered landscape levels and feeling the movements of the jet man's high speed manoeuvres between and around trees and alien creatures was one of the most exciting feelings he had ever experienced. As corny as it sounded when he tried to explaining it to other people, he loved the level where the hero leapt on to the back of a giant alien caterpillar and flew through the level eating trees for bonus points. It always amused him when the jet man jumped off the back of the creature and waved good-bye as it sped off into the infinite distance.

From there he moved about the skulky arcade taking on numerous different personas, helicopter pilot, racing driver, street fighter, global warrior, jousting knight, Gulf war soldier and so on; or rather as far as the imaginations of the games programmers would take his unimaginative mind.
He could feel his fingers starting to itch, it was time for the bandits, the gambling demon was about to possess him. The air of the arcade was thick from the smoke of the numerous shady looking fellow possessed, stood by their mechanical and electrical lovers, cigarettes hung limply from their dry bandit drained lips. He was not going to start on the twenty pence a go machines as they drained the money at an alarming rate, five credits for a pound soon disappeared, and worse the machines were programmed to leave tantalising alignments on the reels tempting the player to put another pound coin in. Jonathan knew this, but he always put another pound in, as one time in a hundred, a win came in on the first credit of the new pound. So in order to conserve his money, he started out playing the tu'penny nudgers, after an hour of which, it was time to up the stakes, on to the ten pence a go machines with their four pound jackpots.

He played the Carousel for a couple of hours, alternating between winning and losing, between living and dying. his internal pain came and went, he noticed it mostly when he was loosing, or failing to get past the end of level bad guy. It was very severe, the first of the days painkillers had been taken when he had settled down on the train, and it was a long time before he was supposed to have his next one in another two hours. His final half hour in the Carousel had culminated in a disastrous loss on the twenty pencers. He had been on one machine and won the jackpot twice, so experience told him to move onto another machine as once his one had paid out, it would not do so again for quite sometime as it recuperated its losses. So he moved onto another machine and began to play off his winnings. It wasn't long before his two jackpots had gone without winning any more, so he chased up his losses by placing another fifteen pounds in the machine, for nothing in return. It should no signs of going on the golden winning streak that he thought it would, so he cursed the arcade owner for fixing the odds on the machine, and left the building, as something was calling out in pain from his now empty stomach.

The sky above Jonathan's bench had now started to clear slightly for the first time that day, allowing more and more stars to glimmer quietly through the cloudless patches. He remembered back to the time before his troubles had started, the time in his first year of secondary school when his parents blessed him for being a good boy by paying for him to go on the school's skiing trip to Austria. It was the first time in his life that he had been impressed by nature, and the most amazing memories that he bought back, and was thinking about now, were the stars. He had been gob smacked by the scale of the mountains, and it was there that he had felt the most alive, the freshness of the snow, the pine smells of the trees, the quiet little village they were staying at, and above all the stars. The second night they were taken on an organised tobogganing evening, high up on the side of a mountain. Bored and waiting for his turn to hurtle down the track, he turned his frost glowing face upwards to the heavens, and was blinded. Above the deep purple and blue serrated silhouette of the razor like mountains, across the orange pinpricked and glowing floor of the vast valley, were a quire of singing white points in the sable black, crushed satin backdrop of the infinite sky. They sang to him in their timeless silence with a voice of deafening loudness, the stars seemed to take up more of the nights mass than the darkness did. They were so much more voluble than back home, their sheer weight of number and brightness made him feel so small on the giant mountains in the endless dimensions of the night. So small, but alive, and glad to be a minute spectator of the overawing sight. That night he fell asleep on the balcony of his hotel room, snugly protected by layers of thermal underwear and bulky ski coat, lying on his back staring into the bright, polka dot void of the sky.
But now, in Barry Island it was only the main constellations that were visible, the plough, orion and the odd bright solar system planet shinning like low wattage light bulbs in the smog thick and cluttered atmosphere above the industrial hive of the South Wales coast. A plane from the nearby Roose Airport took off over the headland to his left. He imagined him self on the plane heading to the Austrian Alps to live, as he had promised himself on the tearful return from his weeks holiday there.

His cigarette was slowly burning to its ochre seat, and he was slowly sliding into more remembrances of the day past. He focused on the events in order to take his mind off the great cold void that he could feel starting to take over his body, and the strong bile cough that was about to rupture his lungs in a frantic gasp and fight and air. He started to focus on his lunch time, but it exploded into fragments when the lung implosion came and rocked his body. He shivered some more, took his last drags on the cigarette then flicked it into a small puddle a few feet away over the rain soaked concrete of the promenade where it sizzled for a brief second and then died without any fanfare. He could just see the tail lights of the plane that had not long ago taken off, they were slipping away, over England to some place faraway from there. It gave Jonathan a strong pang of melancholy for not seeing more of the world, and for messing up his. So he let his mind travel back once more to his day, especially his lunch.

After leaving his losing streak back in the Carousel, he went to the chip shop a few doors down the high bricked gaudy terrace. It was sandwiched between two grand old Victorians, emitting the famous smell of Barry Island chips. He went in and bought his favourite take away meal, chips, sausage and gravy, all swirling together in their white plastic tray. He headed off for the funfair, whilst hungrily gulping down the brown coated chips and castrating the rich brown sausage with ferocious bites. He crossed the road that separated the tacky arcades from the tacky fair. It was empty as he crossed. He thought about the summer when the quiet road would be full of hot and sweaty families crammed in their old and battered cars. The excitement of the day ahead was to much for many of the young children to bear in the heat, leading to rows with irate parents, and wound up brethren. The fair was an island in the middle of this gridlocked traffic moat, a castle of fun and imagination protected by the slow moving stream of metal, sweat, anger, excitement and full nappies. But not today. Today the castles defences were breachable, so he entered into the tawdry keep of the South Walians' palace of escape, through the large and rusty blue gates.

The fair was quiet, the grey day having kept the people away. The only inhabitants of the maze of stalls and rides were a few gangs of mitching school kids and the odd family with nothing better to do on a chilly and rainy day. Jonathan looked at the rides with about as much enthusiasm as he could muster, as the days in which he found them exciting had long since passed. His apathy was tinged with a sadness that he had never been able to get away to one of the larger and newer fairs that he had read about in the papers or seen on the telly. The lit interiors of the con stalls bleed out onto the concrete pathways of the ground. It was quite dark in the grey sky, storm clouds were rolling in over the channel. They were not dark and lilac enough to be thunder clouds, but they promised the event of heavy rain in the next few hours, as opposed to the fine but wet drizzle that was slowly falling at the moment. He looked apologetically at the people behind the counters of the con stalls, and ignored the barkers as they persuasively tried to entice him onto one of their fixed games, he was not in the mood for throwing too small hoops onto too big pins, or trying to knock down tough bottles with sponge balls. So he floated through the stalls to the annoyance of the stall holders, and walked on to the funhouse.

The thing about the funhouse for Jonathan was what he remembered about it, and not how it was now. Before it was and internal maze of dead ends and fiendish devices that turned and blew air and bleeped, now it was no more than an empty skeleton ravaged by years of foul neglect and vandalisation. The outside was the same, a tall square building with big semi-circle windows and yellow and blue stripes decorating the walls. Inside, the passage ways that rose and fell, twisted and turned, the cage maze with its mirrors and air jets, the round-a-bouts and swings, the shuffle boards and the spinning barrel walk way had all been ripped out. It was now just a big hall, with a staircase that led up to the ninety degree death slide, which was the funhouse's only reason for not being knocked down. That was the only main attraction left in the building. It was possible to see in the walls of the interior, where the struts and supports for the old passage ways which used to run up and down the walls where. Open scars and fissures denoted where they run. They had also removed the old giant, evil looking carnival clown from above the entrance of the building, which used to frighten Jonathan as a child. It used to beckon people in with a crudely mechanised arm whilst staring menacingly, much like the evil of the one armed bandits that his parents would go and give him handfuls of pennies to play with, long before he was old enough to understand the dangers of gambling.

He had stood outside the heartless funhouse finishing his chips whilst standing in the thickening rain, remembering the fun he had in it as a small child, when it still held some mystery and thrills. He had been reminiscing a lot recently, mainly because he found great difficulty in visualising any kind of future in the way his life was going. It was becoming increasingly depressing, always losing his money, never having any in the first place, having to pick up the left over stubs from ashtrays in order to have a smoke, waiting for the next giro to come. But, today it was going to change. Today was to be the most important day of his life. Today he was going to kick his bad habits for good. He chucked the empty white tray into the gaudy waste bin with 'Have an Island Day' stencilled on it, and walked back through the fair.

The dark stacked clouds were encroaching closer on to the island, the wind picking up to caress the empty aisles of the fair with its cruel touch. He walked back through the stalls and watched their keepers glum looks as they stared into the oncoming downpour. The lights of the fair made strong contrasts with the sharp dark grey of the afternoon storm front. They were like the special effects mattes backgrounds on many a garish fifties science fiction movie, reminding him of the arcade computer graphics. The coloured fairground lights carried an electric like charge, giving them the air of unreality against the sky. The rain soaked concrete glowed from the puddles of light that spilled on to the wet ground, turning it into a pulsating disco floor, over which he danced awkwardly on his way to the next arcade of the day.

The sky above his bench was now a deep and dark blue, infinite and spotted. The clouds had parted to the both sides of the bay and beyond, leaving him staring into an amphitheatre of clear sky, of which England formed the stage on the horizon. The excess water was dripping of Jonathan onto the bench, and from the bench onto the floor. His fingers felt lost now that he had no cigarettes left, shaking and fidgeting in their impatience, a sensation heightened by the cold. He was sodden and wet through to the skin, but a smile had broken across his glowing but sullen face.

He had cured his gambling problem, never would he play one of those life draining, carcinogenic, addictive, machines again, it wouldn't have been possible without his recent trip to the hospital. He felt that a great weight had been removed from his shoulders. He felt cured and free. And for the first time in his life he felt at one with himself. The idea of not spending his days spent in the smoky arcades playing the bandits was ominous at first, but now he was liberated. He turned his head to look at the flashing palaces behind him, and with a great effort he lifted his arm and swung it around to the arcades. In one defiant gesture he raised his fingers into a 'V' position and shouted above the noise of the fair and the sea. "Fuck you, never again." People stared at him across the rain carpeted promenade, he didn't care, and besides, the Barry people were used to seeing nut cases rooming the front, so they paid little heed. It meant the world to him though, to utter his defiance that he had wished to for many years. It was the casting off of his old life, in the hope of something better.
He doubled up on the bench, a spasmodic movement, half involuntary, half expected. There was a sharp pain in his stomach, biting at him with the fury of a dying wolf. He concentrated his mind away from the pain, and back to the day past, suffering under the dark and uncaring night.

After leaving the fair and its sad inhabitants behind, he crossed back over the road to the arcades. At that moment the pregnant sky unleashed its furious storm, sending down thick sheets of heavy spring rain. The last part of his trip to the arcade had ended in a quick and painful dash into the dark shelter of the arcade. He had come to his other favourite place at the Island, which had no name, but he called it the shack. It was an old and corrugated iron building, with big sliding doors that looked like they required a great deal of effort to shift them back each morning for the start of business. It was an off white colour on the outside, and reminded him of a giant Anderson shelter on the inside, like the one he used to play in as a child in the dense undergrowth of the wasteland at the back of his great grandfathers house.

And like the old den of his early days, the shack was a haven for many obscure and dreamlike childhood memories. It hadn't changed since he could remember, the most modern amusements there must have been installed ten years ago, the oldest a hundred. It was like a museum, but it was in fact a working business. Even since the introduction of the newest sized coins of the decimal range had been introduced the machines remained unconverted. You would change your new money at the kiosk for the old coins, and vice versa with your winnings. From what he could make out, it had at one time housed a merry-go-round, The plinth of which was a raised area in the middle of the arcade. The old wooden horses from it hung silently from the walls around the shack. The place was full of old shooting galleries, penny drops, skittle games, hockey games; and at its centre was an old gambling machine, upon which, if you could guess what thirties film star the light stopped on you could win up to 6d on it. He also remembered that there were several 'what the butler saw' machines there when he was younger, but they had long since disappeared, like the old trains and prosperity of the place.

So he spent another couple of hours in the shack, another fifteen pounds had disappeared, he had been up and then down, up and down and then finally down. It was getting close to teatime, but he was content not to eat anymore that day. His lunch had been ample, and besides, he couldn't afford to waste another two pounds on the luxury of food, not today. As he left the shack he took the next of the days painkillers, washed down with the stale water that he had been carrying round with him all day in an old empty squash bottle. Tyrants had never been so powerful as the rain that was streaming and cascading down from the dark skies above him. So he rushed onto the next arcade, to shelter from the heavy onslaught that was threatening to raise the sea level to flash flood proportions, it was time for his final onslaught also.

He had just under thirty pounds left, and he was going straight onto the twenty pencers, make or break. If it was to win then he would leave rich. If it was to lose then he was going down in a ball of flame, whatever, he didn't care.

It was just passed four o'clock when he entered the Goldmine Arcade, the last place he wanted to visit that day. The machines were a welcome sight after the wet dash from the shack. He felt that the rain was trying to wash his life away, to purge the pavement of the waste of human life he had become. Outside the rain continued pouring, whilst inside it was Jonathan's money that was pouring away at an alarming rate. He had quickly lost ten pounds with no sign of a big win. He laughed mirthlessly at the thought of a big win, on these machines the biggest prize was six pounds in tokens and three pounds in cash. He knew there was no way of making lots of money on the paltry prizes that the machines were allowed to pay out. It had never worried him, he always explained it away by saying that it wasn't the winning or losing that counted, but the skill of playing the games that made the bandits so vital to his life. But he knew that really, the playing of them became addictive, further compounded by the hypnotic rays and the flashing lights that were built into them to snare the unwary.

In truth, which was what he had never realised, in the bundle of microchips, wires, flashing lights and beeping speakers, he had found his perfect partner. It was a symbiotic relationship between man and machine, he had found an electric lover. He gave his money, and in turn he had someone to talk too; to argue with; to whisper complaints too; to take from; to shout at; to hit; to feel superior too; and to be controlled by. More than he had managed from any humans in his life.

His money was disappearing faster than he was winning it back, the rain was easing up now, but the money was still pouring away. Jonathan gambled away the jackpot on two occasions, and won small amounts on others. First he was down to twelve pounds, then up to sixteen, down to nine pounds then up to eleven, down to five pounds, up, down and all the time the flashing kaleidoscope of reflections danced merrily and unconditionally across his deep and gaunt features. It finally happened, he was down to his last pound coin, five more spins then nothing left to give.

He sighed heavily and placed the last coin into the slot. Game 1, nothing. Game 2, two bells and a nudge, needed two to win, nothing on holds. Game 3, nothing. Game 4, nothing, got another nudge, no flash on the holds again. Game 5, reel one, jackpot. Reel two, Jackpot. Reel three, (it span for what seemed like an eternity), lemon, nothing. The lights on the machine went out to denote the end of a game, and then two seconds later flashed back on into its attract mode, waiting to ensnare another unlucky punter. His heart sank at the impersonal display the machine put on, the message 'insert coins' flashed across its L.E.D. display, but he had none.

His throat bulged at the realisation that it was over. His body felt empty like the old funhouse's evil carnival clown, just a couple of cogs and wheels span to make his crude parts move. He moved one of his mechanised parts, his heavy arm, and splayed his fingers against the shiny glass display of the machine, the lights dancing around his open fingers. He drooped his head, and with a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes he whispered to the bandit. "Bye, bye old friend, you ain't never going to see my face again" He was tempted to add a couple of 'Oh, na nana, oh nanas' afterwards in his creaky almost singing monotone. But he curtailed the temptation as his eyes started to water, which was a relieve as they had become sore from the smoke. He turned away, lifted his head and tried to walk out as tall as he could considering that he had just lost the last of his proceeds from the sale of his favourite possessions. He left the arcade for the last time.

He stood outside under the buildings canopy, lit a cigarette, and stepped out into the easing rain, across the road, the damp and shining promenade, to the bench where he had been sat since.
Jonathan sat cold, silent and distant, staring into space, as he had been for the last couple of hours. England looked more distant than ever, an ambiguous mass on the horizon, not even partially explored. He tried to imagine the furthest places, the beautiful corners, the breathtaking masses of the truly big cities and the quiet countryside. All the things that had he discovered may have changed his life. He could feel a chapter of his life coming to an end, the bandits were behind him now, and all his other problems would soon be at an end. His biggest problem at that moment was the pain that clouded his body with an ashen veil.

It had grown steadily worse since his first visit to the doctors four months ago. He had known it was serious as soon as the doctor had referred him to the specialists at the hospital, and when the results of the test had returned, he wasn't surprised to discover that he had a malignant lung cancer, slowly spreading through his body. He had expected something like this to happen to him, later rather than sooner, due to all the crap he had smoked from the age of thirteen, and the mutating rays from the hours of exposure in the arcades and gambling clubs. The gut blow came when they told him he was past treatment, and only had five or six months to live, all they could do was give him a course of painkillers to try and reduce the pain. He had come to terms with the forecast of his early demise, which was why he had wanted to make this last trip before he went terminally pushing up the daisies, as he blackly put it. He wanted to feel that he had achieved something before he left his unachieved life, and kicking the gambling habit that had tortured him for the past thirteen years was the greatest thing at that he could do before his end.

He had come to terms with it after a long fight of 'why me?' and 'what did I do wrong?' He had spent endless despairing nights laying alone in the messy bedsit, and, as when ever anything went wrong, he had the blowouts on the bandits. Jonathan had no one to talk too about this cruel twist in his life, so he had to sort it out for himself. In his despair he was able to sort it out for himself, it was not a pleasant solution, but as far as he could see, it was the only way out of his problems. He had decided, to save himself the months of intense pain ahead, to save burdening himself on the nurses, doctors, and failing health service. He also wanted to save himself from the emotions, the indifference that he would have to fake, the heroism of suffering in silence. And most of all to, save him from having to face his parents, and ask for their support. Finally, he wanted to go out on a high note. The decision had been taken, he turned to the age old noble tradition, euthanasia. It felt like the honourable thing to do, he saw himself as an ancient Samurai. It was with a sad, self effacing grin, that half an hour earlier he had taken the remaining seventy three painkillers, with the stark utterance of "Hari Kiri."

Jonathan sat on the bench, looking at England, the last of his life force was quickly ebbing away. His head was loosing any remnants of lucidity very rapidly. He thought to himself, how strange, but when I left the Alps something inside told me that I would return one day, but now I won't. Tears started to carve themselves across his gaunt face, as he tried to remember the beautiful things that were racing through his mind, but they were eluding him in his trance like near death state. Instead he was being treated to a rapid-fire, quick frame, flashback parade of his life. Slowly he could feel himself weighting into the bench, as if being dragged hellbound by some unseen tractor beam from beneath the planets surface. It was a scary, final feeling sensation, from which he quickly tried to bring himself round, to raise himself into the hands of God, but all he could do was feel himself being dragged under, further and further into the bench.

The bench had become Jonathan's bier, in the past hours he had been over his life and then taken it. He could feel the last tatters of his existence blowing away in the chilling wind across the Barry Island seafront. He was giving way to the heavy force pulling him into the bench, contented to watch the last of his flashback images spool of the end of the reel. It was strange, he had expected a choir of bright lights to descend upon his bench, out shining those of even the fair, or at least some sign that he was about to enter a whole new stage of existence. But all there was, as his life ended, was a numb, malignant and painfree darkness. He had always hoped to be a spirit, and soar above his empty shell in some new found ineffable knowledge, looking down on all. But nothing soared. He was just cold. Alone. His last conscious act before succumbing to the endless night was to roll his head back, and look into the sky in the hope of a new start, a better start. But in return, all he received was the soulless glare of countless aeons of infinite nothingness, an indifferent sigh, as the wind wrapped itself about his bench and body. Finally, his body slumped, resignedly, as the last of his life left him.

The sky above his bench became clear, and he remained seated for another seven hours, before some unfortunate drunkard came over to him to ask for a light. People had chosen to ignore him in life, and for the first part of his death they choose to do the same. Many people had milled past him on the bench, under the gaze of heaven. They dared not touch him, as in his dishevelled state, he looked like a tramp who had enjoyed a bit to much wine, to rouse him could have led to trouble. The Barry night lifers were use to seeing drugged up and bombed out reality refugees sprawled out about the place; so they ignored him.

Had they looked closer they would have seen the empty brown pill bottle at his feet, floating unceremoniously on a puddle that spread under the bench and across the shiny promenade, in which a thousand kaleidoscope reflections swam silently. His body was still highlighted by the lights from the glowing facades of the arcades and the spiralling illuminations of the fair, but his had long since stopped shining. Yet he still sat, until the final flashing lights pulled up, long overdue, and he was taken away. In the background the noise of the space invaders and the bandits reverberated indifferently through the night, only broken by the noise of the sirens as they dissipated into the darkness.