Frank Lives Alone

By Richard Davis

Frank Boomer was an idiot and he knew it. He had worked for KleenKarzis, a cleaning outfit who claimed to have elevated the washroom experience to the next level with their deep cleaning and perfuming skills. It was a cushy job and the pay was decent, but last month Frank was fired for stealing a gallon of industrial grade bleach. He had diluted it with tap water and sold it to punters down at the Sledge pub. Fortunately for Frank his state pension kicked in a fortnight after he was sacked.

When Frank received his first state pension payment, it felt like a kick in the balls. But a kick from a slipper, not a steel toecap. It told him he was surplus to requirements and awarded him money as a payment to skulk off and die. A bitter pill washed down with a sweet cider.

Frank had decided to spend a chunk of this month’s pension on booze instead of food and had planned a liquid lunch before carrying out the day’s task.

Frank took care putting on his shoes, especially the right one with the heel support in it, so as not to trigger the plantar fasciitis that would then set off his crepitus knee, so it creaked and ground like an oilless hinge.

Frank sat outside the Severed Arms nursing a pint of lager. He looked up at a window in the house opposite and watched the blurry outline of a naked person drying themselves with a red towel, presumably after a shower. He was unable to determine whether it was male or female because of the frosted glass and looked away across the street to the police car parked outside a boarded-up bank. The two cops sat inside only had eyes for their phones.

Frank sat outside the pub because two blokes perched on barstools inside chatted gross shit into one another’s hairy earholes.

- Use flamethrowers on the beaches.
- It’s a fucking invasion.
- Yeah. Make them pay for the fuel.
- Yeah. Like a death tax.

Frank had considered saying something, but he knew one of the gobshites had a fearsome reputation as a cutter so he kept his mouth shut.

Frank stared at the mottled grey clouds as if his eyes could disperse them to reveal a Greek blue sky. He continued to stare long after the gummies kicked in. He was self-medicating the pain of gradual bodily breakdown; osteoarthritis, an enlarged prostate, crepitus knees, and expanding stupidness. Ever since his forties he had a growing sense of dread, of something approaching or stalking him with ill intent. Sasha told him to seek help, but he never did. He figured it was all part of the ageing process, the relentless rush of life towards the brick wall that stops you dead in your tracks.

Sasha was an angel who worked as a carer tending to the old and frail, the demented and dying. After a day of that, she came home to Frank. Frank had wanted to say all kinds of things to her, but he never remembered if he ever did. He wanted to tell her there was nothing they could do but buy booze and drugs and skinny jabs. Buy trainers and tracky suits and phone shit. Buy Spotify and Macky-Ds and vapes and watch endless nonsense on Tik-Tok. Buy brain damage and attention span decay and butchered thought processing. He wanted to tell her the bedroom stank of cat spray and dogshit. The bedroom stank of processed meat and old fruit. The bedroom stank of dried blood and stale sweat. He could not remember if he told her anything, but he did remember calling her a skanky rat. Two years after they split up, he missed her and he knew Sasha did not miss him.

Frank blinked out the clouds in his head and remembered what he was supposed to be doing, paying a visit to his old friend, Ryan Grimshaw. He had known Ryan for several decades and for the last five years the man claimed to be dying of a disease he would tell no one about. When Ryan told Frank he was terminally ill, Frank was determined to do right by his friend.

Ryan opened the door to his small flat and greeted Frank with a grin. Ryan wore pyjama trousers and a beige sweatshirt that emitted a metallic odour.

- Cuppa?

- Go on, then.

Frank and Ryan sat on the sofa and sipped mugs of tea he had reheated in the microwave.

- It’s like a giant bloody doomy bird hovering just out of my sight, said Ryan.

- Your peripheral vision?

- Whatever the fuck.

- Sure.

- You never know what’s bubbling away inside.

Both men had forgotten their last conversation had covered the same ground almost word for word. Frank stretched his legs and winced when his knees cracked.

- I’ve got crepitus knees, he said.

- Sounds shitty.

- Most old gits get it eventually.

- Can’t you get new knees?

Ryan coughed and the sofa trembled. Frank felt himself slide closer to his friend. The two men looked down at their own hands and knees, to avoid an awkward connection.

- You should join a gym, said Ryan.

- A gym?

- Get hench.

- Why are you telling me this?

- Call it my last dying wish for you, pal.

- Fuck off.

- What?

- Cos now I have to go join a fucking gym.

- Or I’ll haunt the shit out of you.

Both men laughed. Ryan was full of drugs. Full to the very brim of his skull. A door opened in his heart and the hinges sang out like his young voice saying “Hiya”.

When Frank stood to leave, Ryan jumped up and embraced him. Frank could tell from the strength of the embrace it was a final hug, a farewell hug, even a fuck you for living longer than me, fuck you for having no pain, no morphine, no funeral plans to arrange kind of a hug. It was a love you/fuck you squeeze, and Frank understood every second of it and hugged back with an equal strength. He felt his friend’s bones protrude into his own beer gut and man boobs and smelled Ryan’s fear of what was to come ooze through his sweatshirt. Ryan released him and turned to the kitchen. Frank let himself out.

After seeing his old friend for what he now believed was the last time, Frank needed a drink and headed to the Sledge. He strode through a damp mizzle, which was a bit less than a drizzle which was a bit less than a standard shower. Manchester rain came in all shapes and sizes.

Howard Whatmuff was a victim. He didn’t know it yet, but he was. He sat in the Sledge, a tall dark pint with a bright white head in front of him. He’d already downed three of these beauties.

Despite being a pensioner, Howard liked to think of himself as a Goth. His grey hair was long and spikey, and he wore eyeliner and black nail varnish. His Sisters of Mercy T-shirt and tight black jeans were worn and faded. He let his Goth look down by wearing a pair of Clarks suede desert boots on his oversized feet. He wore them for comfort as he had a similar foot affliction to Frank’s.
- There is wealth, but no one really understands where it comes from. It only exists as a swirling cess pool of invisible money that passes from one super rich twat to another super rich twat with no tax deductions. Fuck all trickles down to us, the serf class. It is a self-perpetuating cycle of privilege and power and very few are permitted entry, said Howard. Nobody listened to him, but he was used to it because all his life he had been ignored. He smiled when he saw Frank enter the Sledge because Frank would sometimes engage in conversation with him. He was delighted when Frank sat down at his table.

- I like being me when I’m with you, said Howard.

- Don’t fucking start, Howard. I’m not in the mood.

- Just saying.

- Fancy a whiskey?

Twelve hours later, Frank woke up believing his brain had taken a titanic logjam of a shit inside his skull. The throbbing pain was sickening. Frank crawled to the bathroom and threw up into the empty bath. The wide Technicolor yawn had the usual vegetable soup appearance, except for the weird lump that was sat near the plughole. Frank was so intrigued by its familiar shape he forgot his hangover, reached into the mess and picked it up. When he realised what it was, he threw it back into the puke and screamed. It was a fingertip. A bloody bitten-off fingertip.

Frank scuttled out of the bathroom and hid under his duvet. Maybe it was there before he puked. But how did it get there before he puked? Maybe he was tripping? The thought of puking up a fingertip made his belly heave, so he rushed back to the bathroom and spewed into the toilet.

When Frank had nothing left to upchuck, he gathered his scattered thoughts and decided to examine the fingertip. He pulled on the pair of elbow-length rubber gloves he used to dilute the stolen bleach and reached into the bath. The heavy gloves prevented another clammy flesh-on-flesh contact. Frank held his breath and raised the tip close to his face to examine it. From the edge of the fingernail to the severed joint was approximately an inch in length. The skin around the sides of the nail was tatty as if nibbled anxiously. The dark nail varnish looked vaguely familiar.

Five miles across town, Howard woke up thinking his brain had exploded inside his skull. Howard had zero recollection of what had happened to him the night before. He had never been a big fan of whisky, but when Frank Boomer offered to buy the drink until they both blacked out, he was unable to say no.

Howard moved very gingerly towards the bathroom. He knew from years of experience that any sudden movement would trigger a tsunami of brain damage. He didn’t feel nauseous, but he did need a pee. It was when he reached out his right hand to steady himself against the doorframe that he noticed the dried blood caked on his wrist and fingers. He carefully moved his hand towards his face. The tip of his middle finger was missing. Instead of screaming or sobbing in despair at the loss of a piece of finger, he nodded and devised a plan. He knew he had to clean the wound with hot water and antiseptic before seeking help. He made a slow motion walk to the kitchen and ran the hot tap over his bloody stub and hand. There was less pain than he expected but it was still awful. To calm himself after the cleansing ordeal, he sat on the sofa and smoked a joint. He knew his Pooka would help him.

Howard had found the rubber Pooka figurine in the Gents at the Sledge. Someone had tossed it into the aluminum urinal where it hung around the drain hole with several broken blocks of perfumed disinfectant and streams of departing yellow piss. He picked it up and washed it carefully under a cold tape, dried it with the warm hand blower and dropped it into his leather jacket pocket.

When he arrived home later that night, he took the rubber Pooka from his pocket, pushed it onto the end of an HB pencil and went to bed thinking nothing of it. In the morning, he awoke to discover the pencil had been reduced to a tiny stub and the Pooka looked chunky and healthy. Its rubber face held a satisfied smirk Howard had not noticed before. It looked like a Leprechaun crossed with a Hobbit. He pulled it off the HB pencil with a pop and found a place for it on his bedside table where he could watch it and it could watch him.

Howard first noticed his Pooka was special when he lay in bed one night and examined the figurine’s little face; chubby, rosy cheeks, black eyes, a pointed chin and thin lips set in a smirk. When he playfully kissed it goodnight, it spoke to him, inside his head, without talking aloud. The Pooka was able to communicate telepathically.

- No need for noise, amigo. Silence keeps me safe. There’s folk in this world would like to toss me in the nearest furnace if they found me.

- Okay.

- Don’t speak, just think. Call me, Pooka.

- Okay. I’m Howard.

- It’s a pleasure being your Pooka, Howard. I’m at your service and make wishes come true for you.

- Okay. So, can you help me get rich quick?

- That’s the one task that truly takes it out of me. Like running two magic marathons on the trot. Takes me six months to recover. It’s not as simple as people think. It means I can’t help you with other wishes until I’m restored.

- Okay. I get it.

- I can help in hundreds of other ways. But I’ll fill you in after I take a nap.

The voice snapped off with a squeak and Howard smiled as he placed the Pooka on his bedside table and switched off the light.

Howard stubbed out his joint and retrieved the rubber Pooka figurine from his bedside table. He eased his bones back onto the sofa and held up his precious Pooka. He turned it around and pushed his damaged finger into its rubber hole. The Pooka belched a mouth-fart and winked into space. Once the pain in his finger had subsided a little, Howard closed his eyes and sent a pleading thought to his wee Pooka.

- Sacred Pooka. Return what was bit off me and I will forever love you. Amen.

After a five second pause, Howard’s bones rattled and clanked like an ancient fairground contraption, and he was dragged down to his knees by invisible Pooka power. It made his hair stand on end and his eyes bulge in their sockets like purple gobstoppers. The commotion ended when the Pooka shat out Howard’s middle finger complete with a new distal phalanx tip and a shiny black nail. Howard leapt for painless joy and used his new middle finger to flip at the world outside his window. The Pooka had also fixed his hangover.

Despite everything, and because he was still high, Howard decided he had enjoyed his night out with Frank. He looked forward to repeating the mostly forgotten event soon.

The moment the Pooka had tapped into Supernature’s power matrix to fix Howard’s finger, Ryan passed away in his sleep. An imbalance in the local gene pool had finally been resolved.

After five years of saying he was dying, to the point where few believed him, Ryan was dead. It was still a shock to Frank even though it wasn’t as big a shock as it could have been. Like if he’d been a picture of health and was hit by a bus or a tram or a heart attack. Out of the blue.

Frank knew he would miss his old buddy, but he would not go to his funeral. He refused to attend funerals since his mother’s ended in a graveside brawl involving two cousins over who should take charge of her cats. Funerals were just another fucking racket. Frank sniffed and wiped his eyes; Ryan would understand. But he would go to the wake and drink whisky until he blacked out.

Three days later, before he left for Ryan’s wake, Frank made a promise to himself not to bite anyone.